Alone in the Otherworld
by TheProtobabe
Summary: A Riolu struggles with her dark, guilt-ridden past, while her trainer also falls into patterns of self-hatred after running away from home. When they head into Nimbasa's fairgrounds to make happier memories, something happens and they are shunted into a terrifying new world... TW: Attempted Suicide, Gore, Depression, Abuse
1. Prologue

A small, black-haired boy tugged at the fingers of a man who looked like an older copy of himself, walking as quickly as possible without rudely yanking his father forward. The boy's spiky hair stuck out from under a faded, backwards ball cap, his loose shirt hanging at the armpits, pants cuffed up high at the ankles to make up for the long length. His over-tight sneakers suffered worn holes and missing pieces of rubber, though this did nothing to slow the boy's prancing gait. Bright, eager eyes shone straight forward, never looking back once, and when a small building came into view, the boy could no longer hold it in. A loud gasp escaped his lips before his face split in a grin. He was off like a Zubat out of Hell, straight towards the structure.

"Justin, wait for your papa!" The older man called, shaking his head and smiling as he to a canter. Red-and-white spheres softly clinked against the metal fasteners holding them onto the man's belt. A hand hovered over the Pokéballs as protection so they wouldn't get jostled badly.

Justin giggled, eyes still trained on the building. It was a humble place-the square footage couldn't have been over 1,000, the siding bore peeling paint, and a sign that read [I]'Pokémon Breeder'[/I] in hand-painted lettering squeaked above a splintering wooden door . A low, homemade fence hung around in a rectangular perimeter just behind the building, where a bunch of varied creatures were playing, napping, eating, drinking, snuggling together, or... wait, what were those two doing? Justin wondered vaguely why a couple of foxes were climbing on top of each other in the corner. It looked like they were playing leapfrog?

He was about to investigate further as he ran up until an elderly man sporting a pipe between his lips came through the old wooden door. Dark eyes investigated the boy, calculating.

"Mmph. Just a kid. You a trainer?" The man wasted no time getting down to business, arms crossed. Justin panted from his run up the hill, but noticed with a little twinge of nervousness that the old man was really tall. A thick, yellow-white beard coated the man's lower face, and one eye was squinted halfway shut. There were no signs of a smile on the man's face, but Justin noticed crow's feet by the old man's eyes. Justin relaxed a little at this.

"Today's gonna be my first day," Justin explained with a huge grin. The old man chuckled, the noise a bit muffled by a set of smoker's lungs.

"I bet you're excited, then. You got someone with y-Ah," The man stopped speaking as soon as he saw Justin's father approach. The younger adult clutched his side, panting a lot harder than the ten-year-old had been.

"You must be the boy's father, then. Name's Edgar. You?"

Justin piped up, "My name's Justin! And my dad's name is..." the boy hesitated, realizing how impolite it would be to call his father by his first name.

"Mike," the man interrupted, finally standing up fully. He shot his son a quick glare for running off, though the pleasure of seeing his son's excitement softened it. "Nice to meet you, sir. We spoke over the phone yesterday."

Edgar nodded. "Yeah, I remember you. Saved up t' get the boy a Pokémon for his birthday, right? Come in, then." The old man turned and pushed the door open, not waiting for an answer. "You got a Pokémon in mind?" The old man called behind him as he led them to the backside of his cottage.

"Yes. My boy and I looked for something that would be strong enough to protect him, but would also bond well as a first Pokémon partner." Justin looked up at his father as he spoke. "We'd like a Riolu, either gender, please. Preferably from good stock, if it's not too expensive."

The old man rubbed his chin and stopped walking. He turned and looked in Justin's direction, though his one-eyed gaze was somewhat far away. "Hmm... well, their parents were... but it shouldn't matter..." Edgar started mumbling to himself. "Won't affect the baby, I don't think..."

"What? What is it?" Mike asked, concerned. Edgar shook his head.

"Ah, it's nothing really. The parents of this litter left the enclosure for some strange reason, and I think it had somethin' to do with their owner. He wasn't a kind man, exactly. But the pair of 'em were prolly the strongest Lucario I'd ever seen, if I'm bein' honest. S'just..." Edgar scratched at his beard. "It's rare and really unusual for a Pokémon to leave their masters, even if that master becomes abusive. More often n' not, I see Pokémon die from it rather than leave." He shrugged. "But I don't think it really matters, since these are their babies and they won't know a thing about it. Shouldn't be a problem."

"Hmm... that is unusual, but... I agree. I don't think that would affect how the Pokémon's children act," came Mike's slow agreement. He then sighed and brought out his wallet, causing Justin to start bouncing on the balls of his toes. "How much do I owe ya for one of them?"

"Ahh... we'll go with 120 thou' of them suckers," Edgar said.

"That's... aren't they usually more expensive than that?" Mike asked before he could stop himself. Pokémon babies, especially Riolu, went for almost double that price on a normal basis. For the old man to give it to them so cheap… was he eager to just get rid of these eggs?

"Yeah, but like I said," Edgar told him, "There was some strange history with the parents of these kiddos. It don't feel right givin' ya a raw deal."

Mike pulled out the money and handed it over, choosing not to question it any farther. "Well, if you say so." As he handed Edgar the cash, a niggling thought that there was a wrongness to his scene jumped to the front of his mind. His was of cash made it halfway to Edgar's outstretched hand before he hesitated.. He could still go back on this, and go home empty-handed... Mike looked down into his son's face, brightened by the hope and joy of having a life partner in the Pokémon his father was about to buy for him.

Mike shook his head and gave Edgar the money. Of course he wouldn't do something so cruel as to deny Justin his right to a first Pokémon, as he'd promised.

"All right then," Edgar gruffed as he stuffed the wad into his pocket. "C'mon, boy, and choose an egg."

Justin squealed with delight as he ran down to the clutch of eggs Edgar had pointed to, brushing a hand against each one. Gentle warmth radiated from each egg, along with a strange, alien feeling that infiltrated his mind. It was like... he was looking at someone else, and seeing their happiness. It twined with his own eager excitement and joy, like he was feeling a stranger's emotions along with his own.

As he laid hands on the last one, however, no such warmth came from it. A spike of cold terror jabbed at Justin's mind so hard that he yanked his hand back, akin to the instant reaction to touching a hot stove.

"It's okay," he told it in a soothing voice. "Shh..." Justin touched the egg again, and the cold feeling washed over his mind once more, though it was less surprised this time. This one wasn't joyful, like the others had been-it was afraid.

"Hey, it's okay. I can take care of you," Justin cooed. He folded the egg into his lap. The two adults watched in silence. "Shh, shh. You're a... you're a girl? And... you're so little... and scared."

Justin smiled. "I think you should come home with me. I can protect you! So don't be afraid," the boy told the speckled oval. He looked over at his father. "This one. Definitely."

Mike felt his persistent doubt creep up on him again. But the way his son cradled that egg...

"Well... if you're sure, yeah. Let's take it home."

"It's a _she_, Dad."

"Hmm?" Mike hummed in question.

"It's a she. I'm gonna name her..." Justin looked up in thought for a moment. "...Natalia. Like that wrestler lady from TV!"

Mike looked dumbfounded, then threw his head back with a hearty laugh. All his baseless doubts were forgotten. "Oh, that's a great name, son! Let's take little Natalia home, then!"

The father took his son's hand, who, in turn, clutched the small life inside the egg under his arm. The two of them waved at Edgar and walked home. Justin's smile was soft as he glanced down at his new partner.

"I'll protect you, Natalia. I promise."

Six months later, Justin was dead.


	2. Self-pity

**Many years later...**

"Come on, now, you two. There's some stuff I need at the PokéMart."

A blond woman walked down the block on boots that clicked against the concrete. A long, white summer dress swished at her calves and danced out behind her, where two small Pokémon tailed her. One was a short, white-and-green Pokémon whose eyes were hidden under a strange cap, head adorned with some sort of red horn; the other, a blue, bipedal jackal Pokémon with wine-red eyes.

Natalia, the blue jackal Pokémon, avoided meeting eyes with Brigael—the white Ralts. She could sense the darkness in his thoughts specifically aimed at her, and did not want to start another fight with him while their trainer ran errands.

The Riolu knew that Brigael loathed her. She could tell he mistrusted her, especially when she chose to keep silent about her personal history. Every minor thing about her personality and mannerisms seemed to set him off. No matter what Natalia tried, nothing appeased Brigael, even if Zorayda chose to trust Natalia and respect the newer Pokémon's privacy.

She winced when she felt a tendril of Brigael's psychic power inside her mind. Her body tensed up but she said nothing, even though her fur puffed up along her shoulders and neck. A low whine slipped through her teeth.

Their trainer glanced over suspiciously, but after a brief inspection, she kept walking.  
-Stop doing that,- Natalia whimpered through a mental link with Brigael. Certain Pokémon had this ability, and though Natalia wasn't a Psychic type, they still had unusual traits. This was one of them.

Brigael scoffed. -Just as soon as you tell me why you feel so much guilt. Why don't you ever speak about your past with either of us?- The Ralts shot back.

It had been a few years since Natalia went home with Zorayda from a daycare center, where Justin's father had put her up for free adoption. The man had chosen to stay anonymous, and no other information about Natalia was given besides her experience level. When Zorayda had rescued her, Natalia kept going on and on about how much she'd wanted a Riolu. She'd been even more excited when an expert deemed her genes to be flawless—a perfect bloodline. Natalia had refused to even speak for months, however, and even then, her timidity did no favors for her battle training.

Since then, it had been a struggle to get along with Brigael, who had already been jealous that he was no longer Zorayda's lone Pokémon partner. He suspected Natalia since she'd joined them, and her silence only deepened his mistrust and hatred.

A second jab made the Riolu actually cry out. She spun around to fix Brigael with an indignant look, but remembered his typing and chose not to attack.

-That hurt!-

"Natalia!" Zorayda shouted. Natalia jumped, unaware that her trainer had turned around. "What do you think you're…" Zor paused when she noticed the Riolu's tensed posture.

"Alright, what's going on?" The trainer's voice was exasperated. Natalia turned her face away, feeling Brigael's intense gaze on her. The trainer frowned. Zor gave Brigael a searching look, her facial expression changing. Natalia felt the woman's emotions fluctuating though she kept silent, and realized that Brigael must have been communicating with her through a private mental link.

Heat blossomed in Natalia's face, humiliated and angered by the Ralts's treatment. Though, a part of her couldn't help but feel deserving of his wrath… The 'conversation' looked as though it had ended when Brigael's cheeks puffed up with indignation and Zor had bent to pat Natalia's head.

"It's alright, Natalia. Brigael just isn't used to having a new Pokémon partner quite yet." Brigael said nothing to back this up. "We'll just have to get to know one another better. Right, Brigael?" She added, darting a quick glance over at the psychic Pokémon. He turned away and folded his arms. Natalia heard air rush through Zor's nose, though the trainer didn't continue to berate her Ralts.

"Let's just get to the market," she told him with more than a hint of ire in her tone. The rest of their trip was a stiff, quiet one, made uncomfortable by the Pokémons' brief quibble.

* * *

It was a little later in the evening when Zorayda recalled her two partners into their Pokéballs. She bent to unzip her boots and kicked them off at the door, pushing a pile of other shoes out of the way so the door could open and allow her inside. The smell of old dishes and garbage made her nose wrinkle. Piles of last semester's biology books taunted her from the kitchen counter—the place they'd ended up after Zor ran out of room in her tottering old bookshelves she'd picked up out of the junkyard.

'Right, I need to take the trash out… and clean up. Eventually.'

She looked down at her belt and frowned at the Pokeballs glinting in the fluorescent lights. Brigael hadn't liked Natalia from the beginning, but something he'd seen in her mind or sensed in her emotions had especially bothered him a few days ago, and since then… he hadn't relented on trying to tell his mistress that the Riolu was a bad seed.

She couldn't really see it-how could such a shy, withdrawn thing cause any trouble? She was born with her timid nature, and unlike most humans whose personalities could change so quickly, Pokémon took a very long time to change their core being. So, it didn't make logical sense that Natalia was different before they'd met her… making it unlikely that she could have done something as horrible as Brigael was saying.

Zor rubbed her temples. She couldn't keep berating Brigael for being protective or suspicious when Zor herself had doubts about Natalia. She knew the Ralts wouldn't let up on this topic unless she kept an open mind about it. On the other hand, invading Natalia's privacy was awful to do, and could cause what little trust the Pokémon had in her trainer to evaporate.

'This is too hard to think about tonight,' she grumped. Zorayda's frown stayed on her face even after she'd long since drifted into uneasy dreams.

* * *

Green eyes, flinty with accusation, stared. A tall, bony girl, with lifeless flowing hair and an angular face stood with unnatural rigidity. Her skin glowed bluish white in the moonlight, then rapidly changed to a glowing crimson outline in the blood moon's rays. Zorayda's feet sank a few inches as her weight shifted. She looked down. Yellow sands, tinged with the moonlight, cascaded around her toes. The granules were hot, as if they'd just been under blazing sunlight.

A scorching wind picked up and hurled hot sand into her face. Zor flinched and gasped, and the ill-intentioned sand zoomed its way into her mouth and down her throat. The taste of raw earth and heat coated her tongue. She hacked and flinched backwards, coughs bending her spine double. Small flecks of spittle and blood covered her arms as she flung them up to shield her face.

The sand let up for a moment and Zor took the moment to look at the naked figure before her. Ribs poked out under small, sagging breasts. Hip bones protruded outward and created a concave bowl where the girl's belly should have been. Hollow eyes, filled with contempt, peered above her jutting cheekbones.

The tall girl's left arm rose slowly. Her finger pointed in Zorayda's face, and with some shock Zor realized that the sands ate away at the girl's flesh. The ribbons of earth rapidly wove around the girl's limbs, acting as a strange sort of sander belt like the one she remembered seeing in her father's garage. A realization struck her. Zorayda's heart fluttered in her chest as she looked at the girl.

"...Grace, is that you?" Zorayda tried to say, but as soon as she opened her mouth, the sand invaded, scoring her teeth, scraping her tongue, suffocating her. Violent coughs forced to her knees as she heaved in air. Embarrassing amounts of spittle and mucous exited her mouth, but she didn't care as much as she should have in that moment—all she wanted to do was breathe without choking on the damned sand. Her eyelids cracked open once she could take in a shaky, cough-free breath, when she noticed that a pair of dead eyes was looking up at her. Zor jumped backwards, stumbling over her own legs and arms and landing on her backside. Tears leapt to Zor's eyes, scorching her worse than the hot sand had.

'Grandma?' A wash of grief and guilt came over the young woman. This was the face of her grandmother in death, just like she'd seen at her funeral—except someone had buried the old woman in the dirt, save for her face. Zorayda hadn't gotten to give the woman a proper goodbye before she'd slipped into a coma at the hospital. Her family had informed her that after Zorayda had run away from home, her grandmother had gone into a deep depression. She'd stopped walking much or doing anything, lamenting the loss of her granddaughter who had left without saying so much as a word to her...

Zorayda cried into the dirt. When she looked back up, her sister was flanked by others¬¬¬—Zor's mother and father. Or, what looked like them...

A huge, fleshy woman, naked like Grace, stood to the left. Her reddened eyes looked as though she'd never slept a wink in her life. The smell of sweat and body odor rolled off of the woman in waves, face ruddy with exertion. Her hair was missing in most places—mangy like a dog, limp, and greasy. The woman was disgustingly obese, a huge contrast to the pale, scrawny figure of Zorayda's sister who stood and looked up at the woman with fear lighting her eyes. Gobs of soft fat fell in folds, down the stomach, thighs, covering her knee joints, stretching the belly button into a sideways frown.

On Grace's other side was their father. He was clothed, for some reason, but he was standing sideways to Zorayda. His shadowed eyes avoided contact with his eldest daughter.

He and Grace both flinched when Zor's mother roared—it was the sound she'd heard for years, of her mother shrieking in her ears. It was a sound that scraped the marrow of her spine and flayed her nerves and made her heart stop before going into palpitations.

"No—no, stop…" Zorayda moaned, curling up once more to look into the dead face of her grandmother. She touched the dead face with one hand, a tear falling onto its cold cheek. "Grandma…"

In the past, her grandmother was always a soft place to fall, a person she could run to when things got bad at home. Her father was apathetic, her sister powerless, but Grandma could always be the shield for her when she could no longer take the abuse doled out by her mother.

"Lazy…" came a panting accusation. Her mother's breath wheezed with the crushing weight of her own flesh. "Heartless, selfish…" The woman stepped closer, growing taller and taller with each step forward into the searing sands. Zorayda could only crouch below, forced to look up at the monster she had to face. "Stupid, ungrateful…!" Zor whimpered and cringed like a whipped dog, waiting for what was going to happen next. "YOU LITTLE BITCH!"

Hands curled like claws grabbed Zor's fleshy upper arm with surprising force. She was lifted off of the ground—on instinct, she dangled her feet like a small child. Her breaths came faster, like a cat panting in hot weather. "Your fault, this is ALL YOUR FAULT!"

The screams were all around her, in her ears, in her mind, rattling her eyes and jaw—"YOU DESERVE THIS. You left your sister, you disgusting whore." Zor felt herself flop back and forth like some grotesque mannequin as her mother shook her violently. Her teeth clacked against each other—she felt a sharp pain on the inside of her top lip. Zor tasted copper. "You've FAILED everything. You good-for-nothing tramp. You left your grandmother to die alone."

Zorayda's throat closed up and white-hot tears tracked down her face, leaving trails in the dust. She could barely see through the blurry wetness, but her mother's wide, infuriated gaze and gnashing teeth were clearly visible. Zorayda could not argue with anything her mother was saying. Trembling, she went limp and hung her head. Her mother was right. She should take this punishment—she deserved every moment of it.

"I am going to kill you."

Sobs wracked Zorayda's broken form, mucous and tears mixing with saliva and blood from between her lips. Still she chose not to fight. She felt herself be thrown into the scorching sand—her mother had used as much of her strength as possible to make sure her daughter's neck snapped forward as she bounced on the ground. The back of her head went numb in an instant, and there was a deafening ringing in her ears.

The words Zorayda had heard from her mother and from her own mind chanted over and over in a sick chorus until her head was filled with nothing but self-hatred. Her eyes stung and burned. The sand was eating away at her sight, grinding her nose away into a raw, bloody mess, her lips and throat searing with the grinding particles. When she looked with the last bit of sight at her sister and father, she saw that her father had turned away, and her sister looked on with sadness.

Grace's lips parted, the words quiet and cracking with tears, but even over the wind, Zorayda could hear her.

"You're not my sister anymore."

* * *

"Guh-!"

Zor bolted upright in bed heart throwing itself against the inside of her breastbone like a frantic finch. She'd had the dream again.

With a growl, she plucked a pillow from the bed and hugged it to her chest. It was a small comfort against the internal turmoil she struggled with after every night she'd had this dream.

It reminded her of all those years back in her old home-if she even bothered calling it that. She pressed her forehead to her knees, thoughts of her mother screaming, blackmailing her, slapping her and bludgeoning her in the kitchen when she'd accidentally broken a dish when washing them... She remembered physically blocking her mother from touching Gracie when her sister had back-talked one too many times, resulting in their mother's wrath...

Zorayda remembered the day she finally screamed back at her mother, voice breaking and becoming bloody raw, her own powerful screeches much like that of a panther cornered and taunted in its own jungle. She remembered packing her things that night, sneaking around quietly... seeing her sister lying there, peacefully asleep, unknowing of her sister's decision.

She wasn't sure if it was minutes or hours later when she finally stopped crying. Her eyes were too dry to produce any more tears and she couldn't breathe through her nose. She peeled the hair from her face that had gotten dried and stuck from the tears, utterly exhausted. She tried and failed to rub the weariness from her eyes. The thick layer of sleep covered her eyes, so she fell back onto the mattress.

The young woman caught a flicker of movement from the nightstand, where Natalia's Pokéball lay, but she'd already drifted into unconsciousness before she could trouble herself about it.


	3. Reluctance

Natalia peeled a bleary eye open to see that the sun had risen high in the outside window of Zorayda's apartment. She hadn't slept well; visions of Justin danced in her mind far too often, and Zor's muttering and tossing about in bed had woken her light sleep in the wee hours of the morning.

There was no need to wonder what Zorayda had been dreaming about. Unlike Natalia, Zor had been much more open about her past. The Riolu empathized with her mistress's need to get away from an awful situation, but could not fathom the bravery it took to up and leave like that with naught to her name. It was just too bad that Zorayda herself couldn't see it that way…

The Riolu sighed and let herself out of her Pokéball. Contrary to what people believed, Pokémon could do this, though the belief came from a Pokémon's obedience to its trainer's wishes to stay inside a ball. This was for safety and convenience, not as a device to imprison their partners. In the case of wild Pokémon, the initial capture acted as a way to catch a wild Pokémon against its will, though after that it had the choice to leave whenever it wanted. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, though, the creature respected its new trainer far too much to do so. A fair battle and capture was every wild Pokémon's unspoken contract with a human.

Natalia smiled a little to herself and hopped up onto Zorayda's bed, where the blonde sprawled unceremoniously across the sheets. The Riolu yipped and gave Zor's face a gentle prod, pointing out the time when her trainer squinted at her Pokémon.

"Ugh…" Zorayda groaned. She slapped a clumsy hand to her forehead.

_-Good morning,-_ came Brigael's "voice". The two girls looked over and saw him sitting near the window. His horn glowed a little brighter red in the sunlight.

"Hey, Brig," Zor greeted. Her voice was groggy and cracked. The trainer smacked her lips with distaste. "Dragon breath…" she muttered to herself. She got up and grabbed her hair clip from the bedside, putting her blonde locks in a messy updo before stumbling off to the bathroom.

_-Brigael,-_ Natalia began cautiously. The Ralts glanced at her from under his cap, but said nothing before going back to sunbathing on the shelf near the window. Natalia let out a tiny frustrated breath but didn't offer any other words of conversation.

The seconds ticked by in anxious silence for Natalia until Zor came stumbling back in her long t-shirt she usually wore to bed. This time, her fingers twined into the handle of a steaming mug of delicious-smelling coffee as she rummaged one-handed through her drawers for underwear and clothes. She threw an outfit on without really paying attention before sitting on the bed and clearing her throat.

"Come here, you guys," she said in a gentle tone that commanded obedience nonetheless. Natalia scooted up to the foot of the bed obediently while Brigael took his time, still lazy from the sun's rays.

"I don't want you to fight anymore," Zorayda began. Natalia's ears flattened back again at the sound of exhaustion in her trainer's voice. Sudden guilt that she, along with Brigael, may have helped to put it there hit her right in the gut. "I want to do something together today. What do you two say about heading to the Nimbasa fairgrounds?"

Natalia nodded, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. She'd never been to the fairgrounds. Though the crowds of people were a bit intimidating to her, she didn't mind going for the sake of trying all the rides and activities. She was still fairly young, and the idea of a huge play day at a fair would always appeal to a child—Pokémon or no. Brigael, on the other hand, sighed, using his telapathic link to both Zorayda and Natalia.

_-Really, Zor? The _fair?- he groaned. The trainer gave him a reproachful look, her smile fading.

Natalia wanted to growl at him. The Riolu knew that Brigael hated her, but to deflate their trainer like that was just cruel of him.

Zorayda didn't seem to mind, however, as she nodded and stood up to put her coffee mug on the nightstand, though Brigael had to steady it from tipping over when Zor'd been too haphazard. She held their Pokéballs in either of her hands. She gave them a quick nod and Natalia closed her eyes, allowing herself to be drawn into the depths of her temporary container.

_

_"__Come on, Natalia! We're gonna go look for some wild Pokémon today!" The newly-turned eleven-year-old boy shouted back to Natalia. She smiled slightly to herself as she pattered alongside her master on two paws, keeping her ears open for sounds in the forest. The path she walked was an overgrown, moss-covered mess, with trees overhanging and arching over it. Her first thought was that this wasn't a well-traversed area, though the implications of that made her nervous. The smell of moss and ivy set her on edge. This path was wild, all right—but she saw that Justin was too eager to turn around. He was practically skipping along the leaf-strewn trail._

Natalia placed a paw over her belly when a pit formed there. She looked up and could hardly see any sunlight poking through the leaves; the foliage was so thick and layered above them. It was difficult to even hear the leaves crunch underfoot because of the surrounding brush.

She froze and trained her ears straight when she thought she heard something nearby. She didn't even twitch a muscle when the very, very soft sound of a low rumble reached her ears. Something was here.

-J-Justin…- _she sent across her link nervously. A faint, strangely sweet scent reached the Pokémon's nostrils—a smell she associated with toxins. But it was gone before she could identify or verify its presence._

"Hmm? What's up, 'Talia?" Justin asked. Natalia heard him continue walking and glanced his way for a moment. He'd begun walking backwards with his arms behind his head casually. The Riolu looked back into the thick of trees as if pointing. She felt her eyes and senses being drawn towards that point…

Justin looked, too, but then switched his gaze back to Natalia. Her ears drooped when he waved a hand and laughed it off.

"I don't see nothin', 'Talia. It's nothin' to worry about," he told her. He'd always do this—try to comfort her when he saw that she was nervous or scared. Natalia tucked her ears against her skull and said nothing more, not wanting to upset her kind partner. It took every bit of willpower she had to turn away from the spot she'd heard something. It felt like she was turning her back on someone who would stab her as soon as she did… But she knew she had to obey Justin. He was her trainer, and she trusted him implicitly.

One step… nothing was happening. Another… she flinched when her paw crushed a twig, the sound magnified by the hyper-awareness she was experiencing. A third… no danger yet.

Natalia breathed a shuddering sigh and started to walk at a normal pace, catching up to her master.

'No need to panic, Justin wouldn't lie. It's okay, there's nothing there…'

_She allowed herself to even smile a little to whisk her worries away. Nothing like forcing yourself to calm down, right? Natalia trotted ahead of her master a ways so he could see that she was being obedient. The young Pokémon glanced back at her master with the smile still tugging at the corner of her muzzle and met Justin's eyes._

That's when she saw the huge, black figure closing in on him.

_

It wasn't too long afterwards when the Riolu was let out again to blink in the blinding sunlight. It was near midday, now—from the sun's position, Natalia guessed that it was close to 2 o'clock in the afternoon. She blinked a few times, allowing her vision to adjust, and saw Zorayda's rigid smile. She waved three yellow tickets around at the pair of Pokémon.

"Woohoo! I got 'em! Are you guys ready for some _fuuuun?_" Zor asked, a huge grin splitting her face. Her eyes were alight with desperate excitement, and even Brigael had to nod with fake enthusiasm. Their trainer laughed—Natalia's smile fell a millimeter when she heard the bit of force behind it. She was trying to be happy for _them_…

Natalia's mood lightened a little when Zorayda took her paw, though, and reached out to Brigael to grab his hand. The trainer smiled down at the little Ralts.

"C'mon, Brig. You, too." The Ralts hesitated, seeming unsure, but after a moment he let out an audible huff.

-Well, if you _insist,_- he muttered. Natalia loved the way Zorayda's face lit up at that.

The three of them made their way around the fairgrounds, starting at the left side and making their way around. Being a warm summer weekend, there was quite a crowd, many of which were young kids that marveled at Zorayda and her Pokémon partners as they passed by.

Zorayda chose the first game—a target-shooting game, where the prizes were plush versions of Pokémon. Of course, Brigael was reluctant to have a go at it, but with some insistence he stood by and watched while Zor made an attempt. The attendant handed her an air rifle that bore scars from many players before, but she didn't seem to mind.

Natalia watched her take aim and shoot, hitting the targets with impressive accuracy. Zor won them each a stuffed doll—Natalia chose the Scatterbug one, since its dorky little face translated well onto a plush animal. Brigael looked pensive before pointing at a Pikachu. The thing looked a bit malformed—with creepy small eyes and arms that stuck out like toothpicks—but Natalia supposed that you couldn't really make everything look good as a plush.

Zor dragged them next to a ride called 'The Scrambler'. One look told Natalia that it would definitely live up to its name.

A huge post stood at the center of the ride, and six spokes branching from that led to human-sized cages with plastic benches and seatbelts within. What Natalia _hadn't_ realized was that the cages themselves spun, as well, and while Zor screamed her delight while the ride turned them 'round like beaten eggs, Natalia just tried her best not to throw up. Brigael looked mostly impassive throughout the ride, but Natalia felt a brief jolt of satisfaction when he wobbled as they all got off.

Finally, the night had fallen, throwing the carnival grounds into a blackness that was lit by the garish show lights all around. A lot of the old fixtures and machines were missing working lightbulbs, making for a few comical missing letters here and there—something Zorayda had pointed out to her two Pokémon.

The three of them made their way across the park, all slightly footsore. Zorayda pointed out the huge Ferris wheel with a giddy grin—it was Nimbasa's famous beacon. Natalia smiled to herself at this; of course her trainer would save the brightest and biggest thing for last.

The Riolu caught a brief flash of something akin to fright in Brigael's aura when Zor dragged them along. Before she could decipher what it meant, it was gone, and the Ralts was protesting as usual. But it was when he used his psychic power to bolt himself in place, that Zor and Natalia took notice of his ire.

_-I_ said, _I don't want to go on!- _he shouted over his mental line. Natalia's eyes grew big and she looked at her trainer to see her reaction. Zorayda's brows raised into her hairline.

"Brig, you were fine with everything else," she began, but the Ralts shook his head stubbornly.

_-No, I wasn't! You've been forcing me to go on everything all day! I didn't even want to go in the first place,-_ he snapped.

Natalia growled under her breath. Zorayda's face scrunched into what was obviously hurt.

"I'm sorry, I didn't realize…" Zor said meekly. Natalia really didn't want to start a fight with Brigael, but it was very hard not to shout at him. If it weren't for the fact that he was a psychic type, and Zorayda had explicitly said that she wanted the two of them to get along, she probably would have. Then again, she never really had the guts to do something so impulsive like that…

Brigael, in his defense, looked somewhat abashed. He fidgeted a bit but said nothing more.

_-I-I'll go on with you, Zor,-_ Natalia offered, and was relieved to see Zor give her a tiny smile.

_-I'm sorry, I just want to be alone right now,-_ Brigael mumbled. Zor went to grab his Pokéball but he shook his head. _-Not right now. Maybe later.-_

"Okay. Brig, um, you can stay here if you want, okay?" Zorayda offered cautiously. The Ralts gave a stiff nod. "Just… stay safe. You can take care of yourself, I guess," she hedged. Brig _was_ a psychic-type, after all.

_-You're such a jerk, Brigael,-_ Natalia shot to him privately. He fixed her with an angry look, but didn't do anything about her statement. Instead, he trotted off to sit at the nearby bench.

The walk to the Ferris wheel was significantly more quiet than before, but Natalia was secretly glad to have a little bit of time alone with her trainer. It hardly ever happened, especially since she was the new Pokémon Zor had been very careful to try and keep Brigael from being jealous.

_'__I guess that didn't work out the way she wanted,'_ the Riolu sighed to herself. The fairgrounds were almost empty by now, with just a few adults lingering to eat funnel cake or sit together on the benches. Natalia and Zorayda approached the Ferris wheel, where a bored-looking attendant waved them onto the nearest ride seat without even a glance in their direction.

"We're the only ones on," Zor pointed out. Her cheeks were flushed—a sign she was feeling happy. Good—Natalia didn't want her night to have been ruined by Brigael's outburst.

_-Cool! Maybe the attendant will let us have an extra turn,-_ Natalia exclaimed, and Zor's smile brightened even further. The Ferris wheel groaned to life, a somewhat warped and silly-sounding song playing from somewhere within its machinery. They were taken forwards first—Natalia could have sworn that her feet were going to touch the nearby fence—but they cleared it, and then they were rising up, up on the huge, circular ride.

"Wow, check out that view, Nat," Zorayda exclaimed, and the Pokémon followed her trainer's extended finger to see a large chunk of Nimbasa from above. The skyscrapers were still far above them, but it was really neat to see the tops of many buildings when she barely reached halfway up the door on a normal basis. The lights that illuminated the city weren't nearly as obnoxious as the fair's, instead blooming with a pretty glow at various points.

_-It kinda looks like a bunch of Illumises,-_ Natalia commented. Zorayda nodded, but didn't answer.

The Riolu looked at the young woman's face and saw a faraway look in her eyes, touched with some sort of sadness. She was a thousand miles away, and so _lonely_ in that brief moment. Natalia had a strong urge to say something to break the silence. A flood of happy words bubbled to the surface of the Pokémon's mind, but before she could form any of them into words, a jagged lurch of the ride interrupted the peaceful moment.

_-What was that?-_ Natalia asked shakily.

"I-I don't know," Zor answered, peering down at where the lurch originated from. Natalia followed her gaze and saw that the Ferris wheel was sort of… frozen in place, but twitching just enough to feel in their seats.

_-Something wrong with the circuits, maybe?- _Natalia suggested. She really knew nothing about electronics, but making theories was better than doing nothing. The Pokémon shifted to look over the front of their bench at the attendant. The man was pushing buttons and kept looking up at them, though Natalia was too far away to see his face. She delved into her natural abilities and tried to sense the emotions he was feeling—his aura was a fluctuating mess of reds and oranges, a sign of alarm and caution.

_-Zor… I think something gone really wrong.-_ Zorayda looked at Natalia with wide eyes.

"Wh-what do you mean?"

_-I mean, the attendant is really scared and doesn't know what to do.-_

The trainer's face fell slack into a look of fear. Her knuckles whitened from grabbing the edge of their bench door.

"Oh… no." The two partners looked at each other with worried looks, when the Ferris wheel lurched again, the metal creaking and groaning like an old man complaining about his bones. "Natalia! We've got to get down!" The inflection in her tone, mixed with the look of panic and desperation—it was so like Justin, it was striking.

Natalia swallowed but still couldn't get rid of the lump forming in her throat. For a moment, there was no difference between Zorayda and the little boy Natalia had failed those years ago. Their anxious, trusting gazes were the same, but this time, it wasn't the unwillingness to help that prevented the Riolu from acting, but the inability to do so.

"We need to get out and climb the siding before we crash!" Zorayda shouted, frantic, but at this point it was a desperate attempt that would not amount to anything.

_-Oh no,- _Natalia said miserably._ –__It's happening again…-_

The metal screeched, a cacophony of sound that hurt Natalia's ears. Her world tilted horizontally in a flash as the ride's metal bindings snapped like ribbons. Natalia watched Zor try to get out, but her legs were bolted into the ride's seat for—ironically—her safety while the Ferris wheel turned. The Riolu was small, so she was able to slip out—but try as she might, her body was too weak to try and break the blasted thing or bend it enough for her trainer to get out. The ride quaked violently and they were tossed bodily by the wheel.

Natalia screamed as she was thrown from the bench, tumbling backwards until the noises all stopped and she knew nothing more.


	4. Paranoia

When Zorayda opened her eyes, her first thought was foggy and nonsensical—_'Where is Gracie?'_

But after a moment, she realized that, of course, her sister wasn't anywhere around. Her brain struggled to piece together current events. What... happened? Where was she? More importantly... she twitched her fingers and recognized a somewhat stiff fabric material under them. Her body was flat on something semi-soft, and she was face-up. It took a bit of work to even open her eyes and blink up at the ceiling. Cheap ceiling tiles were the first thing she saw, clueing her in on the fact that she must have been in some kind of public building. Normal houses had popcorn ceilings or something... this had to have been something like an office, or a clinic. Right, she'd passed out, after...

Her eyes widened. _The Ferris wheel_. She'd been on the Nimbasa fairgrounds Ferris wheel, when it malfunctioned, and she was jerked forward so hard... she didn't remember hitting her head, but then again, neither did anyone who managed to get a concussion so severe. Blacking out had a way of taking away memories. Zor groaned softly and closed her eyes again. When her eyeballs rolled upwards slightly, she suffered a deep ache, like she had a migraine—minus the sensitivity to light.

_'__Oh my Arceus… where is Natalia?!'_

She and Natalia had been on that thing when it broke down. But the Pokémon wasn't here—maybe someone had taken her to the PokéCenter? Zor hoped dearly that the Riolu was okay.

She shifted her body slightly more to her left side, where she felt an edge to the surface she was lying on. Zor pressed down with her hand and attempted to put some of her weight on it. She needed to get up and look around at where she was... She wondered briefly who had taken her here, and where the people from this building had gone. A flash of worry crossed her mind concerning Natalia, but the ache in her head pounded and she pushed it to the back of her thoughts for the moment. First, she needed to figure out her own situation.

Her arm wobbled under the pressure and she collapsed painfully back onto the soft thing she was laying on. Zor winced and guessed that she must have had a lot of bruises, judging by the sharp aches inflicting her senses. The length of the surface and the springiness of it suggested a mattress or a cot.

_'Okay... let's try that again.' _She willed her body to push itself up, this time counter-balancing with her butt and hip to give her arm a break. Zor gingerly came to a sitting position, though she must have risen too fast for her hurt body because the room began to spiral around her. She closed her eyes and moaned, lowering her head and interlocking her fingers behind it.

It took her almost a whole thirty seconds to calm the spinning sensation, and even though her forehead throbbed, she carefully raised her head up again to look around.

She was definitely in some kind of public building. There was, to her confusion, an overturned old card table surrounded by cheap foldable chairs, all eaten up by rust in splotches. Something akin to a teacher's desk sat to her left, though nothing but dust covered it, and there was no chair tucked in behind it. The floor was a generic white flecked tile and looked as though it hadn't been swept in years.

"Hello?" She called out, her tongue thick and clumsy. She was stifled by the walls of the room. Zor looked and realized that there were no windows in here… which explained why it was so dark. The light came, instead, from a different source—looking to her right, across where the old desk was, she saw a door that was cracked a bit. Sunlight, faded, slipped through the opening and lit the room.

Deciding that going out this door was likely the best option, she got up on her unsteady feet. She used one of the old, rusted folding chairs to right herself and shuffled with purposeful steps to the door. She flung it open.

What met her was a sidewalk, not unlike the sidewalks of Nimbasa—but beyond that, she could see nothing. There was a fog that clung to the ground like a misshapen, soggy cotton ball. Zor furrowed her brow. Nimbasa never got fog, or rain… they lived right next to a _desert_. Rain was like a blessing that came once or twice a year, if at all. To see a low-hanging cloud in such a dry city was beyond weird.

A gust of wind kicked up from her left and she watched as the strange clouds swirled, but didn't get blown away at all. It was so thick that Zor couldn't see much beyond the sidewalk below her feet. She shivered and hugged her hands around her arms, feeling the gooseflesh that had decided to pop up on her skin. It was chilly, too—another anomaly for Nimbasa. The hot winds of the desert sands to the south kept the city very warm, especially in the summertime. Right now, it felt more like a cold snap in the middle of _winter_.

She flicked her Poketech when it hissed at her suddenly. She must have damaged it somehow; it wouldn't stop making strange noises, and refused to work when she pressed several of its buttons.

Another thing she began to notice was the absence of _people_. The cold weather and fog should have kept some people inside, especially being unused to such conditions, but Nimbasa was a huge, bustling city. The lack of sounds, be it from cars, radios, people shouting—it was unnerving. But—wait. There _was_ something. Zorayda strained her ears and concentrated on it over the howling of the occasional gust of wind. A high-pitched wailing that rose and fell in a pattern…

It almost sounded like a siren.

_

_-Oh Arceus, oh no, oh no...- _Brigael chanted to himself as he stared at the wreckage of the Ferris wheel. The people left at the fair had gathered around it, including the grim-faced, pale attendant who had narrowly escaped being crushed by the machinery. Several police officers were searching the debris and writing things on paper, shaking their heads.

Zor and Natalia were nowhere to be found. The police kept saying that this often happened in big wrecks like this, but it was strange that they weren't seen at all, given the fact that Ferris wheels didn't really have tons of brick rubble and building material to collapse on top of the victims.

Brigael kept insisting over and over that he could feel them, that they were alive. His emotional link with Zorayda—and the reluctant one he'd formed with Natalia—kept him hopeful that they were going to find and rescue the pair.

The Ralts huddled in on himself, eyes wide under his cap. He'd been so close to going on that ride with them, even if he was terrified of heights. He'd never told his trainer out of sheer stubbornness, but Brigael had always had a fear of being up in very high places, which was why he'd tolerated the other spinning ride and not the Ferris wheel.

Extreme guilt clutched at his gut. He should have gone on with them. If he'd been there, maybe his psychic abilities could have saved them, even if they weren't very strong yet. He should have insisted that they didn't leave him behind. He should have been kinder to his trainer before she'd gotten on the ride.

An officer knelt before the Ralts out of concern. Brigael hardly paid her any attention as tears streamed down his face.

_

-JUSTIN, LOOK OUT!-

_The Houndoom howled viciously, angry that it had been discovered, and charged straight for the boy. Justin leapt to the side just in time and avoided the bull-rushing Pokémon, quickly seeking out his trusted companion._

"Natalia! This is it, our first wild Pokémon!" Justin hollered. His round, innocent eyes had lights jumping in their depths. "C'mon, girl, you're a fighting type! Dark types are weak to you! You can do it!"

_Was he… encouraging her to_ fight _this beast? Natalia looked out from the brush she was hiding behind and saw the black dog glance in her direction. It locked eyes with her and grinned, a grey smog escaping from between brutish teeth._

Natalia's pupils shrank.

The Houndoom growled dismissively and moved on. Obviously it didn't think of her as a threat… But the Riolu's breathing was still quickened with panic. Her heart began beating again, slamming against her other organs abusively.

"N…Natalia? You can come out now!" Justin called. His voice quavered the smallest bit as the canid advanced on him slowly, taking its time. "It's not gonna be surprised by your attack, now, girl, we lost the element of surprise! So just… take it down with a-a… tackle! Quick attack!" The boy's calls grew higher and higher pitched as Natalia remained in place.

'Don't turn around… don't attack me, please… I don't want to die… let me live, Arceus, please, attack anyone else, not me…' _Natalia's thoughts chased each other through her head. Her mouth was partially slack and was going dry._

"Natalia, please!" Justin squealed, his back pressing against the bark of a large tree. "NATALIA!"

Twin circles of crimson sprang open, shocking their owner out of her unconscious state. Natalia hissed in pain as she pushed her aching body into a sitting position. She was somewhere dark and frigid. The ground beneath her was rough and hard and had the familiar scent of asphalt. Was she on a sidewalk or something? The doglike Pokémon rubbed her forehead and moaned.

The sound was answered, to her unpleasant surprise, by a deep, throaty growl. Her fur stood on end along her arms and shoulders as she recognized the sound of a nose sniffing about.

Lines of light peeking from the ground made her realize that she was under something that was keeping her hidden, and the flashes of flickering shadows alerted her to the presence of another entity that had heard her and was now stalking her. Memories of a great black dog flooded her mind and she suppressed a low whine of terror.

The unknown beast snorted, and for a few moments the shadows stopped moving around. Natalia let out a tiny sigh of relief. It must have moved on. The Riolu crept slowly on all fours, not daring to take a breath. She could hear her own heartbeat pulsing through her eardrums as she crawled, lowering her head to the ground to peek outside through the crack of light.

A large yellow eye stared right back.

Several things happened at once: Natalia yelped and scrambled backwards, the covering that had hidden her from the creature was tossed away, revealing itself to be a garbage dumpster, and the thing that had been sniffing around _pounced _as soon as Natalia's hiding place was discarded.

The little Pokémon got a glance of a huge, slender quadruped before she scrambled to all fours, her claws clicking and scratching with frantic speed. The black, foul-smelling beast came within milliseconds of crushing the Riolu's spine, but missed.

Natalia ran as quickly as a tiny Riolu could possibly run, eyes wide, pupils dilated now in the instinct to take in as much of her surroundings as possible.

The monster bayed incessantly behind her, but she didn't hear its footsteps—maybe it was going to leave her alone? Natalia dared a glance back over her shoulder and immediately regretted doing so.

The beast was a huge, black canid, two large, ram-like horns curling at the sides of its head. Bony prominences poked out from actual decorative skeletons it wore, fur mangy and missing in pieces. Its pointed spade for a tail whipped to the sides angrily, and with a calculated glint in its yellowed eyes, it heaved as if it were vomiting.

Its maw opened wide, the sickly sweet toxin smell emanating from its throat—and a wild rush of purple-tinted flame rushed out, straight for the Riolu.

Natalia put on an extra burst of speed, her muscles screaming both to stop and to keep going. The fire struck her and she shrieked like a puppy getting hit by a car. The flames licked at her haunches, but managed not to engulf her completely... but the singed skin burned horribly with a fire that was hotter and stronger than Natalia had ever encountered before. Tears of pain clouded the Riolu's vision, but still she ran, when—_there!_

An open door beckoned, leading into a tall building. The dog-like monster followed, its thunderous growls reaching Natalia's ears, but the smaller Pokémon launched herself through the door to escape.

She got ready to continue her run, but there was a sudden lack of ground beneath her feet. Another shock came to her system—the kind she got sometimes when she missed a step on the stairs. Her body leaned forward, face-down, as she fell through dead air. The door had led into a room with no floor, and now she was falling, falling down into an unknown abyss.

A scream finally managed to find her voice again, and Natalia tumbled down farther, faster—the monster's roars were heard above. It had probably been smart enough not to follow her here, for fear that it would die... and now she was about to meet that fate instead.

_-I don't understand... I must be dreaming, this can't be real,-_ the Riolu thought in desperation. It was her last before she slammed into something cold, then sank into its depths. It was so dark, and wet—rushing water sounds met her ears. She'd landed in a body of _water_.

Relief made her want to cry, but for now she had to gain her bearings in the rushing current. She watched bubbles float away from her muzzle and followed them upwards to the surface, her head breaking the water. She gasped in air and let the rancid-smelling river wash her to its end destination.

Somewhere outside, she could hear the faint sound of sirens wailing—but she really didn't have the time or mind to mull over the implications of their call at the moment.


	5. Hunted

The fog was starting to fade out at an unnaturally fast rate. Zorayda frowned at the air's thinning fog, wondering exactly how it was that it was magically being sucked away, like something had turned on a silent vacuum cleaner to clear out the air's dust. The sirens were getting louder, and they really weren't helping with Zor's aching head. The pain she felt all over her body and the confusion of being in such a strangely deserted place was making her cranky. She _really_ did not want to deal with this anymore... Where was the person who brought her here? Wasn't there a nurse or something that had tended to her?

Something moved just out of range of her normal vision. Zor stopped moving and jerked her head over to look, squinting through the rapidly clearing fog. She could vaguely hear footsteps; someone _was _here! A swoop of relief filled Zor's belly. She hadn't realized it was so tied up in knots until they all relaxed at the sight of another person coming closer.

"Hey!" she shouted. She didn't really know who it was or why they were walking in the middle of the street, but after thinking about it for a second she realized how dangerous that was in the middle of a city covered in fog. "You're gonna get hit by a car or something, come up on the sidewalk!"

The footsteps fell silent, and the vague shape stopped. Zor could sense eyes turning to look at her, akin to the feeling she got when she caught someone staring at on a public tram.

Minor alarms went off in her head for unknown reasons, especially when the figure started walking again. Something was... off about it. She couldn't put a finger on why, but millions of years of evolution and gut instinct told her that this situation was dangerous.

The fog was finally lifting completely, and for the first time Zor got a good look at the thing shuffling in the streets.

The only thing relatively normal about this... person... was its legs. Zorayda couldn't tell if it was male or female, but it was naked, with shiny grayish-pink skin—like scar tissue from an old burn. From its legs upward, it looked as though it suffered from some kind of extreme scoliosis. Its body was turned dramatically to one side, and there weren't any arms. The belly was bulbous and protruded outwards, but the rest of it was scrawny—it reminded Zor of those starving children in third-world countries, with the protruding bones and worm-infested bellies.

She staggered back, her mouth dropping open. Its face was human, if she could really call it that. The only thing was, it was twisted and stretched from the collarbones upwards, like there was no neck, but instead a stretched, warped gaping mouth. Human teeth lined the red gums as if someone had slapped together what they thought a mouth should look like, and above the grotesque lips sat a crooked, beaky nose, and two eyeballs with stretched sockets pulled down towards the mouth.

The thing locked eyes with her, and she could see the horrid blankness of it, paired with a vague sort of lonely desperation. It began shuffling faster towards her.

A low whine, rising in volume, spilled from the gape of its mouth, and she watched with terrified fascination as appendages moved under its scarred skin—as if arms were under there, like someone moving about beneath a blanket.

"AaaaAAAAAAH!" Her mind jerked her body about like a puppet and suddenly she was _sprinting _away without even thinking.

That was no Pokémon, nor was it human—but what the hell WAS that thing?! She ran for what seemed like miles until she was positive she'd left it far behind.

Ragged breaths dug at her throat and burned it as she collapsed in an alleyway behind a dumpster. There was a fetid smell all about, like burned hair and cooked flesh... This was _NOT _Nimbasa.

As much as it looked like it, this wasn't her city. The walls were stained with water and rust in stripes, like years of acid rain had corroded it. Everything metal was eaten up by the rust like swiss cheese. Nimbasa would have had to have been unoccupied for _years _to look like this, but she'd only just passed out...

The sudden change was a shock to her system, and paired with that hideous monster, she realized that maybe she wasn't _awake_...? Maybe this was a terrible nightmare—but she felt pain. She could smell everything, and she knew she probably would have startled awake by now.

A silent sob robbed her of her rational thought. The silence and quiet scent of death was terrifying—but most of all, Zorayda was so scared to be _alone _in this place. Her dirty hands muffled the cries coming from her lips. She trembled in her hiding spot for however long it took to process this strange, hellish place. It didn't help that on her mind was the same question, over and over...

_'Where is Natalia? Where is my Pokémon?!'_

Her crying finally quieted down after a few minutes of raw panic. Zor wiped her face with the cleanest bit of her t-shirt, glad she'd worn cotton. It worked well to get the grime off. She peeked around the corner warily, heart thudding.

Nothing there.

She let out a sigh of relief and got to her feet, shaken. Whatever this place was, she definitely needed to leave—immediately. The streets weren't foggy anymore as she looked. Everything was clearly seen this time around, which was both good and bad... she felt comfort in knowing that she'd see any monsters approaching, but they'd also see her at the same time. At least she would have time to run if it came down to it. She pressed her back up against the trash dumpster and steeled herself before stepping out of the alleyway.

The street was overgrown by weeds and brown, sad plants. Debris—glass shards and tire chunks—littered the sides, building windows were cracked and broken. There was rust _everywhere_. It streaked the sides of buildings, reminding Zor of dried blood. It was an immediate connection in her head—the rust and blood. Everything here was so wrong. It made her want to curl up and hide forever...

Looking further, she frowned deeply. The street cut off, and at the end was the biggest hole she'd ever seen. Zorayda walked cautiously up to it, its gaping deepness drawing her eyes right into the center like a gigantic eye. The road just—ended. Even the buildings cut off here, like this place was a floating island in the dark that ended at exact edges. A chunk of concrete crumbled off the edge of the road and fell.

Zor listened hard... five seconds, nothing. Ten seconds, twenty. Thirty-five. A minute. _Nothing_.

The implications of this sent her reeling. This hole at the end of the road... it never ended. It had to be fathoms upon fathoms deep. This was definitely not the way out of here—she couldn't see the other side of the gaping maw. Time to turn and see where else she could go. She followed the edge of the hole as best she could, keeping an anxious eye out for more of those grey monsters.

A slow inspection of her surrounding area told Zorayda that there was absolutely no exit out of this town. Her breathing began to quicken as she realized that the gaping sinkhole circled around entirely, leaving her on some demented piece of island that connected only through buildings. She suspected that there was a downstairs or sewer system in one of these buildings, having heard the rush of water through metal. The only problem was _finding _it.

Zor heard the howl of something in the distance and cowered immediately into an alleyway. Her senses went into overdrive as she listened, hearing distant snarls and roars. Something was on the hunt, and it looked like it had found its quarry.

A strange relieved feeling flooded through the young woman. Knowing that she wasn't the only hapless victim trapped here was comforting... but _wait a minute._ What if...? What if Natalia had come here too? What if she was the one being hunted? The questions spilled from Zorayda's psyche, but she had no idea where the baying was coming from or how to get to it across the deep chasms. Maybe if she went below, into those water wells or sewers she'd heard?

The trainer sprinted from her hiding place to the door of the nearest building. This one was closest to the chasms she'd discovered—and right away, she made a discovery.

A metal door, plain and promising, glinted and shone out of the rust of its surroundings. An old-fashioned keyhole winked up at her. And on the metal were carved words...

_"Deep down in waste and slop  
You must find the key  
For down below your journey stops  
But through me you will be free._

Through sludge and grime  
Inside a room of refuse  
A narrow stall you will find  
Out of three is what you choose.

Beware though the danger  
For freedom comes at a price;  
Lurking there you'll find a stranger  
Heed well the written advice."

_

Natalia gasped in shuddering breaths when she her paws finally found a solid surface. She sputtered and coughed, though a quick inspection told her that she wasn't harmed at all. Her bones ached, somewhat, however—likely due to the cold of this place.

She curled up, shivering. That monster that had chased her down here… it was a Houndoom. She recognized the Pokémon from when Justin died. This one, though, was easily quadruple the size, and she'd noticed that bits of its flesh were missing. It was very strange, but she could swear that it smelled like a dead body.

Her eyes widened when she heard it again.

It was upstairs, in a room right above her. Natalia instinctively scurried to the nearby wall and pressed herself in the corner, hidden in shadow. The weight of the beast's paws thumped by slowly, directly above her... she heard it sniffing. Careful to stay quiet, Natalia edged along the wall. The Houndoom's range of scent was unknown to the Riolu, but she dearly hoped it was this far or farther. She could have sworn that her heartbeat was audible through her ribcage, so hard was it beating.

The snuffling noises ceased, and for a moment, Natalia thought wildly of making a dash for it. But then the beast's pawsteps moved onwards and the sniffing continued farther away. Never had there been a moment where the Riolu had been more relieved.

She forced herself to move from the wall. She had to find a way out of here, and get back to Nimbasa. Zorayda and Brigael were waiting for her, she was sure of it. The jackal slipped through a crooked doorway and padded to the corner of the next room.

What she did not expect was to step on the jagged edges of a neglected set of rib bones.

The crunch reverberated through the room. The sniffing upstairs halted. Natalia looked in the corner and her mouth dropped open in horror—the remains of poisoned and chewed meat, from both Pokémon and human alike, sat unmoving there. The pile was so tall, she couldn't see the top of it in the darkness... A strangled cry escaped her maw and, realizing her mistake too late, Natalia clapped paws to her mouth. Then, the booming barks sounded once more, and the Riolu scrambled as the Houndoom crashed through the rooms to get to her. The black shape rounded the corner so fast, the Riolu hadn't even gotten halfway across it by the time she felt its hot breath fill the room.

This was it. The monster had caught up to her. Natalia turned around in the corner of the room she'd trapped herself in, sniveling pitifully. She was going to die here, forced to face the thing that had been stalking her since she'd gotten here. But as she looked, the form of the beast was… humanoid? Even in her terrified state, Natalia couldn't help but be confused. Her ears perked forward. The figure's outline was sharply contrasted by the light behind it, but she could see that it was hominid in shape. It kept walking towards her, with determined, shuffling steps, until its face was close enough to see.

Natalia looked on in utter confusion, and then her jaw went slack. _'__No, it can't be…'_

"You did this to me." Justin spat at her.


	6. Guilt

Getting to the place the door had indicated was easy. She quickly figured out that a place of waste and refuse, involving stalls—that was a public restroom. It was like the door wanted her to find the key; directly behind her had been metal, grated stairs, leading down deep into the bowels of the building, and soon she heard the water rushing and dripping everywhere. Rats scurried along the rusted pipes, making Zor skittish, but nothing more met her down here.

Zor stepped quietly through the doorway of the musty old bathroom. She could only tell it was tiled because of a few hanging ones left on the walls, all caked with grime. The floor tiles weren't even a recognizable color anymore—just rusted browns, with grout blackened by the collected filth. There was a gaping hole near the drain in the center of the bathroom that showed right through to the pipes. There was even a hint of light that suggested that there was a basement or room below the bathroom. It was a strangely shocking sight, being able to see through the floor. It wasn't often people were in buildings of such disrepair for long lengths of time.

The whole room was on its last legs. The doorframe Zor had walked through was gouged up in places, as if it was beaten down over the years by students in a public school. The door itself was lying on the floor, warped by years of moisture. When she stepped on it to let herself through, several dark critters scuttled from beneath it. She heard their tiny, crunchy legs scritching across the tiled floor. Zor squealed in disgust, recoiling back. Even in such a horrible place, cockroaches made everything that much more revolting.

A wave of mildew hit her nose so hard her eyes watered, and looking around she found the source beneath the cracked mirror and on all the sink fixtures. She recalled that black mold was bad for people's health—probably from all those home makeover shows she used to watch when there was nothing else on television. The echoes of water and her footsteps made the bathroom sound a lot larger than it actually was and made her wary that monsters could be around any corner. She saw three stalls on the right, in front of the sinks and mirror. One stall's door was crooked, tilting downwards on a single unbroken hinge. The other two were closed, but Zor figured they were the kind that looked closed even when unlocked—the sort you had to push to check and see if it was occupied.

_'Like I'm expecting to see someone in there...' _she thought to herself sarcastically. Though, the bit of humor behind the sentiment was clouded by sudden doubt and fear. What if there was something or someone behind one of the doors? She swallowed nervously. That note had specifically said that there was a key here somewhere, though why someone would keep a key in a public bathroom, she had no idea. Everything in this place was just too _bizarre_.

A flitting motion on her left caught her attention for a brief second. She gasped sharply and looked over at the mirror. There was nothing there but her own reflection. Zor stood still for a few seconds and kept her eyes on it, watching to see if something was hiding around the corner for her. Nothing.

"Hmm, okay..." she said aloud. The sound of her own voice was a strange but effective comfort.

She walked over to one of the doors and pushed inwards. The sight of a sideways, broken toilet met her, the old smell of public bathroom mixed with mildew crashing into her senses. She sucked in a deep, long breath through her mouth and held it there, trying not to vomit. Zor kicked aside some of the porcelain pieces, but didn't see anything but old stains left by blood and other unmentionable bodily fluids. The pipe going to the toilet seemed to also be the source of dripping water. She backed away out of the door, noticing a message smeared above the toilet. _'DON'T LOOK IT WILL GRAB YOU'. _It looked to be written in..._feces_.

Repressing the urge to dry heave, Zorayda backed out of the stall. The key wasn't here—time to move on. That message, though... it was creepy, but so was everything else here. Something about it sent chills through the flesh covering Zor's arms.

She peeked into the stall with the broken door and shrieked, the sound puncturing the relative silence of the place and echoing in the room. Zor clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle the scream and backed away, her lower back touching the counter near the mirror. A face—dead, dried up, and skeletal, had met Zor's gaze as soon as she peeked through. Someone had died in there.

Zorayda's breath caught in her chest at that thought. Someone had died in that bathroom stall. Died. As in, quit living. And, for some strange reason, they were facing outwards, pressed up against the door. Zor put her palm over her sternum and counted the heartbeats, trying to calm herself down. That person had died quite a long time ago. They couldn't do anything to her, a dead body was not going to hurt her... She wiped the heels of her palms across her cheeks, smudging her face with tears and grime. She wasn't going to give in to that fate. She wouldn't be like that poor person in there, decayed and _alone_...

That thought sent a spike of cold into her lungs, but she shoved that aside, too. She took a deep breath and steeled herself before pushing the door in, the weight of the dead body surprisingly light. It clattered at her feet and she jumped away, heart thudding painfully. At least now it wasn't staring at her with those empty holes for eyes... Zor saw the tattered outfit it was wearing and frowned. This person was a girl, judging by the skirt, and couldn't have been older than eighteen, seeing the fact that the old outfit had been a uniform. It was probably neatly ironed and pressed at some point. Pleated skirts were always freshly starched and ironed to keep their shape.

Thinking about the girl's clothes disturbed Zor too deeply to keep thinking about, so she tore her eyes away from the skeletal figure on the floor and checked this stall. The toilet here was intact, but the back lid was missing, revealing its inner workings. It had long since dried up, though, and there was a pink-and-brown ring where the waterline used to be. Zor looked inside, a thought occurring to her. What if the key was in here? It was a somewhat odd thought, but this place was not exactly _normal_.

Something was _definitely _in there. She saw the end of a rusted skeleton key and a shot of relief mixed with victory pumped her adrenaline again. Smiling, she reached in and grabbed it, not even caring that it was probably covered in bacteria.

"Yes!" She whisper-shouted aloud. Succeeding at a goal was so satisfying and made her forget her fears for a brief moment, giving her respite. Zor closed her eyes and hugged the tiny skeleton key to her chest. Maybe, just maybe, she'd make it out of here. There was hope yet for her escape. She turned and carefully picked her way around the body from before, and looked up into the mirror.

A face that was not her own grinned back.

_

Natalia froze in place, only able to gawk with wide eyes. Her old trainer was _alive?_! But… Didn't Justin die _years _ago? Natalia had seen him get ripped to pieces by that wild dog Pokémon … He had been bleeding all over the place, and in the end, he wasn't able to even breathe because of a crushed trachea. Furthermore, why was Justin here, of all places? This Arceus-forsaken Hell was the last place Natalia wanted to see her old master.

But there he stood, his shape taller than she remembered. He looked as tall as he should've been at this point in time, and for a moment, the Riolu had a flash of intense hope. Was it possible that Justin had survived that brutal assault? But, she'd watched him get torn literally to pieces! Or... were they both dead, and this was the afterworld? Although... Justin didn't deserve Hell, as Natalia would have.

But then the figure of her old master stepped into the light, and with horror she watched his face morph into what she assumed was its true form.

Justin was missing both eyes. Gaping holes of what looked like rotted meat peered out at her accusingly, and between them she could see marks on his skin that suggested that it had been torn apart and then hastily slapped back together onto his skull. Twin horns of pale bone poked from the flesh and curled behind the place where his ears should have been. His throat was still crushed into oblivion, barely supporting his gaunt head and bloodless face—it was like looking at a grotesque children's lollipop.

She wasn't even sure how he could speak. His fingers reached outwards, arms lifting lopsidedly. Natalia noticed with silent recognition that his arms were bent at awkward angles, and some fingers were simply not there. It… it was like someone had taken all his missing body parts and—and had stitched them back on. His favorite coat was ripped in several places, leaving streamers fluttering in the breeze.

"Why, Natalia?" He begged in a hoarse whisper. Justin sank to one knee as if he couldn't support himself anymore. "Why would you just let me die…?" What was left of his hands scraped the dirt near Natalia's feet.

The blue jackal felt a sharp, searing pain stab at her heart to where she physically clutched her chest. She had caused this. She had personally caused Justin's suffering. He was dead, stuck in the afterlife, his soul still wanting closure... At least, it's what Natalia had to assume. Why else would he be here? Was this a purgatory...? Was she dead?

And then his form began to _shudder_. His shoulders jutted out in violent shapes. A voiceless groan escaped his lips, and his body convulsed, skin bubbling like it was being boiled.

With a shock, Natalia realized Justin was growing. A scream ripped through the air and Justin was no longer only Justin, but a wolflike, hulking brute. The enormous, terrifying new Justin towered above his new prey, fangs bared—there were canines of a predator there, but Justin's human front teeth still remained, looking like a grotesque grinning carnivore.

It took a few seconds for her to understand that the screen ripping through the air had come from her own mouth, but by the time she came to that realization, the Houndoom-Justin had slashed at her belly. She fell to the floor.

The tiny Riolu stopped screaming, tears dribbling down her muzzle as she looked down at her own body. The slashes were clean, just three neat lines that made stripes in her fur. It took a full two seconds for her blood to seep through the wounds, like a string of small sanguine pearls.

She shifted just a few inches, and in seconds it was like a dam had broken. Natalia was bleeding, badly, and she thought with a strange detached air that maybe her muscle had been sliced through.

Justin laughed down at her, the noise somewhere between a melancholy howl and a jolly cackle.

"What a coward," the dog snarled softly in Pokéspeak. She could feel his hot breath mist over her face.

Natalia grimaced and attempted to get up. The pain was too much, however—and right when she tried to move, she felt something inside of her shift in an uncomfortable and instinctively terrifying sort of way. A hot, salty wetness met the taste buds at the back of her throat, and she looked down once more. Red, slimy looking… _stuff_… was beginning to poke out of the slash holes.

The Riolu couldn't even think about what it was at that moment. She felt as if she was going to die of fear before she was going to die of blood loss. She whimpered and glanced up at the bear with wide eyes. She knew that she deserved this fate after what she had done to Justin.

The boy-monster bellowed, though the noise was a chilling mix of Justin's dying screams and the Houndoom's monstrous sounds. Every hair on Natalia's spine stood straight out at the sound, instincts begging her to get away.

Justin wasn't himself anymore. He'd been forced to share souls with the very monster that had taken his life away… she could feel both entities inside that warped body. How it had happened was a mystery, but Natalia knew that he was only like this because of his violent death at the Houndoom's paws.

"Face me, Natalia. Look at what you've _done_. Remember the pain you caused me while the light leaves your eyes." His voice rumbled, half-amused, half-enraged.

Lips trembling, Natalia obeyed.

_The wolf's paw struck out lazily. Natalia watched her master's head snap to the right. She thought for a split second that maybe he was just fine, that the Houndoom was only toying with him—but then, there was the blood. There was so much of it… it pumped out of his temple, poured over his eyebrow, down to the corner of his eye, down his cheek… it crept down to his neck and puddled in the hollow of his collarbone._

"D-Daddy…" Justin moaned softly. His eyelashes fluttered—Natalia could see the whites of his eyes underneath them. A strong, metallic scent reached the Riolu's nose.

'Natalia, what are you doing!? Save him! There's still time!' _Her mind screamed… but she made no move. Her knees shook._

_The horned beast approached the boy slowly, and with tender care it wrapped its jaws around Justin's throat. The boy feebly tried to push at it, but the Houndoom acted as though it hadn't even noticed. Natalia heard a wet _pop_, followed by a squelching sound, and gurgling moans. She couldn't see past the dog's hulking form, but she could hear Justin swinging his arms weakly, desperately trying to stay alive… but the canine hung on, a low, strangely comforting growl slipping through the cage of its teeth. Everything fell quiet._

The Houndoom backed away.

The boy's blood was a vivid contrast against the pallor of his skin. His eyes were closed… he could have been sleeping, save for the gore that covered his front and soaked his black t-shirt a darker hue.

_Natalia only watched on in revulsion and icy terror while the dog sniffed the body. It pulled at Justin's wrist with its teeth while holding his arm down with a paw, right at the crook of his elbow. The hand came off with some tugging, though strings of white tendons held on as long as they could before the dog sliced them with its teeth. The hand was tossed aside. This Houndoom was likely fussy about the boniness of the meat… It pushed a paw into Justin's sternum. Natalia heard a muffled _crack _in his chest, and then a crunchy break. It had separated Justin's right arm from his body._

_When it gently laid his body sideways and placed a paw on the side of his head, Natalia blacked out._

The Riolu looked up and reached out to her old trainer's aura, seeing so many things all at once. Tears fogged the corners of her vision as she stared into the abyss of torment her Justin had endured all these years as she'd followed her new mistress, forgetting her past. She could see everything... the murderous intent born of the animalistic rage Justin felt at her betrayal. The disgust at her cowardice. The pain of death. The righteous anger at the injustice of his young death.

The sadness of a little boy who missed his father. The despair of a boy who had died alone, afraid... and deep, deep in his soul, she saw the spark. Something that made her tears begin flowing unchecked down her muzzle and nose.

Her limbs protested as she got to her feet, not caring about the blood that splashed hotly down her belly.

"Justin... after all this time, after everything I've done to you..." She raised a paw weakly to his face, and saw his eyes narrow fiercely. "You still love me..."

Tears streamed down her face and her neck, down into her chest fur. She was crying so much... Natalia put both paws on either side of his face, feeling that he hadn't moved. Sobs wracked her tiny body and she poured out her sorrow.

"Justin! I'm sorry! I'm so, so sorry... I was a coward, I was weak, how could I have let you just die like that?! After you'd promised to protect me and keep me safe, after you raised me, taught me to fight, trained me and loved me, I let you die, I killed you, I'm sorry... I-I'm s-s-sorr-y-yyy..." she wailed. "Just-i-innn... I'm sorryyyyy!"

She hadn't noticed that the face she was grabbing had changed. Suddenly Justin was smaller, and back to being human. Natalia was grabbing a small, round boy's face, tousling his jet-black hair that just wouldn't lie flat under his cap. He was small again—and this time, he looked... whole. He wasn't rotten, or disgusting, he wasn't grown... he was the Justin that Natalia remembered. This was Justin just before his death.

"Natalia..." he pushed her away. She saw two large, whole brown eyes looking into hers. "I've been waiting so long to hear you say that," he told her, this time in normal human speech. "I knew you felt guilt for what happened. I'm so _angry _at you…" He let his arms dangle to his sides, looking down at the ground.

The Riolu's eyes glimmered with the tears she was still shedding, feeling as though every burden she'd ever carried was lifted from her heart. Was… was Justin _forgiving _her?

"No," Justin told her harshly, eyes burning as he looked back up at her. Apparently he could read her thoughts now, too, in this world. "You must prove your sincerity to me by finishing a task."

A searing pain clutched her middle, where the claw slashes were. Natalia screamed as fire sealed the wounds shut, leaving three ugly scars where Justin had nearly caused her death. The excruciating pain lasted only a few seconds, but it felt like forever until she was released from it. She heaved, though nothing came out.

"Please, my old friend," came Justin's wheezing voice. Natalia looked and watched his form shudder again, convulsing and trembling. He was fighting that thing—the monster underneath the skin...

Suddenly the Riolu understood. Justin was trapped sharing a body with the very thing that had murdered him. The Houndoom. She set her face into a snarl of determination and anger. How _dare _that beast hurt her boy?! Justin whimpered and bones cracked. This time, the filthy fire and curved claws did nothing to phase Natalia's confidence, even if her entire body trembled before the boy she called her friend so long ago.

The great skeletal dog's jaws parted, a husky, tortured voice slipping through the cracked fangs.

_"Kill me..."_


	7. Fear

_"Ralts, you need to calm down now!"_

"Don't make us take you in!"

Shouts thundered incessantly around Brigael, whose psychic powers had manifested themselves in his great stress. Officers weren't helping him look for his trainer, the friend he'd had all his life... and a part of him felt responsible for Natalia, too. Though he never really trusted her, Zor had put a lot of faith in the little Pokémon, and Arceus damn it all, he was going to find them both.

Their near-presence was driving him mad. People kept poking at him, asking him unnecessary questions, and finally he'd had enough. Screaming through an unchecked telepathic line, his telekinetic ability to create barriers came into play, and he shoved every human and Pokémon away from him in an angry attempt to put space between them and himself. He needed to find his trainer.

He could feel them. They were so close, and yet their physical bodies were nowhere to be seen... it was almost like they existed on some other plane, in another life that was here but _not_. The implications made the Ralts's head pound. They couldn't have been dead... if they died, he would have felt their emotions just—stop. They wouldn't even exist on the emotional plane anymore. But he could feel them. They were terrified and confused.

It pushed Brigael into a psychotic frenzy. What could he do to help someone who wasn't physically _there?!_

He couldn't even get a message out to them. Even so, he kept at it, pulsing the telepathic communication out as strongly as he could with no finesse—only sheer telepathic power.

_-I am here! I'm here, come back home, Zorayda! Natalia, Zorayda?! Where ARE you?!-_

_

The smile that graced Zor's features slid into a open-mouthed, silent scream of terror as she stared into the bulbous, milky-white gaze of the creature that copied her movements in the mirror. It was like it had replaced her reflection with its own horrifying facade, staring at her, waiting for her to turn and see it before it pounced. Its skin was a mottled flesh-tone, like dead tissue around a freshly stitched-up wound. Its mouth stretched into a grotesque, toothy grin, its nose was a skeleton's triangle, its eyes were a lidless gaze that bore into Zorayda's and froze her in place. It was like it had physically grabbed her eyeballs and forced her to look right at it—she couldn't even glance up at the tendril-shaped things originating from behind it. Her peripherals caught glances of the appendages, bloody in color, twisting around like dripping smoke... they exited the mirror's surface, weaving their way all around Zor's body.

The key fell to the floor with a small, metallic ting. Zor did not feel the tendrils actually touch her, but something was forcing her arms to rise at her sides without her permission. It was an agonizingly slow process—the creature's gaze was reddening, until it looked as though its eyes were made of the vulnerable flesh of the inside of someone's eyelids. Its grin grew wider and wider, its teeth darkening all around the edges with rot, the skin sagging all around the bones and eye sockets with wrinkles.

The copper tang of blood reached Zorayda's nose, though it was as if she'd gotten a nosebleed rather than smelling blood from an outside source. She felt her jaw being pried apart, pulling her two sets of teeth from each other behind her lips. She worked her jaw muscles, willing her mouth to keep shut, but the sheer strength of the creature's will was stronger, and slowly—so slowly—it was working against her, forcing her to obey its will. Tears were forming in her eyes, both from pain and terror. She could not look away from this thing, she could not fight its will.

Zorayda's thoughts strayed to the meaning of the message in that bathroom stall.

_'I looked... and it grabbed me,' _she remembered. _'Maybe that's how that girl died.'_ The stray thought was quiet, like a whisper, but it made Zorayda freeze in panic. That girl died. That girl had _died_. Did that mean... did this creature in the mirror grab her too? Was she going to die here and keep this dead, lonely girl company? Was this going to be Zorayda's end?

The brief slack from her shock gave the monster the give it needed, and with a awful strength it forced Zor's jaw opened wide with a sickening _crack_. A raw, guttural scream came straight from her throat, but was quashed when a river of those disgusting, bloody tentacles rammed their way into her mouth. They filled her senses with its horrid iron taste and a cloying but salty smell. It suffocated her, forced her airway shut, and try as her muscles might to instinctively fight back and struggle, her body was being held in place by tons of those bloody tentacles. Tears streamed down her cheeks, this time because her gag reflex worked overtime to rid itself of the invasive objects any way it could. Zor felt her throat convulse over and over, felt the flesh of her esophagus and trachea pulse around the widening tendrils of that godless creature.

She wanted to vomit. She wanted to cry. She wanted to cough. She wanted to _breathe_.

There was no sound but the soft gurgles and suffocated coughs as the unfortunate trainer was lifted above the ground by a few inches, at perfect viewing height of the mirror. She began to see through a cloudy red haze, and with a shock, she realized that the blood of the monster was invading even her eyesight, changing it.

Smoky black-redness clouded her vision, but then it cleared once more... but now she was seeing more than she had in the first place. The mirror was clear, clean. There were no cracks—in fact, it looked brand-new, and like someone had just wiped it down with Windex. The creature was nowhere to be seen. Instead, Zorayda saw something entirely different, and horribly familiar.

_

"You _monster_," Natalia spat upon seeing the Houndoom's rotting form. She sensed its contempt and laughter, its hatred. This was the creature that had killed her trainer—it was the cause of her cowardly choice and Justin's death, even if she was the one mostly responsible for failing to protect her trainer. The dog lowered its head and gazed stoically with yellowed eyes that narrowed under bony horns. It was ready for her. This time, she did not fear it—her hatred of this beast was far beyond any sort of cowardice she could conjure up. Her anger burned away the terror that had once frozen her in place as the dog had preyed upon her most beloved friend.

Words were not needed. The dog's roaring flame blazed forth, and the battle had begun.

"KyyyyaaAAAAHHHHH!" Natalia pulled everything she'd ever learned forth into the front of her mind. Memories of Zorayda's failed teachings, of Move Tutor training that never stuck, all of the power of her blood—it all surged and sang in her blood. This was what she was born for. This was the heat of battle, and this was the most important one Natalia would ever fight—both for herself, and for Justin.

Fire blazed and seared the dog's fur, but she avoided most of the ferocious toxic flame by zipping just below the brunt of it. The decaying beast's eyes widened as it realized that Natalia was now right upon it, and she landed a vicious punch just under its rotting jaw. A horrid crack sounded and the Houndoom yelped, backing up and hiding the injury like a wild animal. Natalia felt power and confidence well up in her just from the solid hit. She felt no pity for the Houndoom, and followed the first punch with another from her left paw, again feeling the surge of power flow through her musculature.

This time, the blow cracked one of the dog's exoskeletal bones that covered its ribcage. It gave another yelp mixed with a howl, baring fangs at her—except only the top row could be seen, because the bottom jaw had cracked right off. It was now hanging from only one of its jaw hinges, and though Natalia felt pride for getting in such a brutal hit, the image of the hulking beast so hurt and vengeful was possibly even more terrifying than when it was completely healthy.

It belched toxic flame again, but this time, Natalia could not avoid it. She yowled in pain—though, thankfully, the fire avoided her eyes, it scorched her muzzle, and made her feel like she was going to melt. Her steel bones did not tolerate fire-type attacks well at all.

It did not matter. She would win, and the key was using all the fighting moves she knew to bring this dog _down_. The key here was to watch and wait, and use that power to strike the dog right where it hurt...

The Houndoom pounced, jaws open wide. It was going to bite her—and though it could only scrape its top teeth in a weak attempt to do so, it would still be very painful. But Natalia did not move, instead bracing herself against it. Her teeth clenched as the rough, rotting canines dug into her shoulders, making her whimper in pain—but in that moment, she looked right into the beasts's eyes and glared. And just for a second, it looked afraid.

She countered the attack and landed blow after blow on the underside of its top jaw, dislodging teeth, bloodying its flesh. It howled and tried to summon fire, but the pain broke its concentration as Natalia mercilessly bludgeoned the dog with her immense power. One good punch sent a shower of toxic blood down on her body, but she still did not stop. The Houndoom struggled for freedom, but its canine was still caught in the small Pokémon's body, and even tossing its head about would not free it. Natalia clung on with her back feet, using the power-up punching moved she'd been taught so long ago by her trainer. The technique was flawless, and soon she was practically glowing with strength.

Finally, after having its face pulverized into pulp, the dog whimpered and crashed to the ground, twitching. Natalia, covered in gore, yanked herself from the huge piercing tooth, panting. It was done. She'd freed her trainer from this beast... She gave a sigh of relief, glad that her injuries—though painful—were not severe. She leaned against the wall nearby to catch her breath.

The Houndoom's paw twitched.

_-No. No, stop it.-_

A crunching sound could be heard and the body rolled slightly.

_-Oh, Arceus...-_

The exoskeletal bones of the dead dog cracked and separated themselves from the bloodied body. Six spokes of the thick, outer 'rib cage' were free from the flesh, and they wiggled in the air like the legs of an upside-down cockroach. The spokes on the opposite side found the ground and dragged the Houndoom's limp form across the ground and left a scraped trail of blood behind. Then, the bones inside its body began to twist.

The limbs cracked and moved at unnatural angles, like a person twisting a chicken wing around to get to the meat more easily. Tendons dislocated right out of the sockets and tore flesh from bone—all underneath the skin of the dog's body. The rib spokes jerked violently, and the room shook—they'd broken themselves backwards to stand on the ground, meaning that the Houndoom's body flailed about atop. The dog's paws dangled limply, sacks of broken flesh... The beast's new form was a second entity, spiderlike, scuttling grossly and hissing through the pulpy throat of Houndoom...

Natalia fell back on her rear and shielded her face in terror as the dog-spider-beast advanced upon her, its 'feet' clicking on the metal floor with renewed purpose. The unholy monster reared back on its hind four legs and raised the front two, hissing again. The Houndoom's bodily fluids dripped from its throat, the droplets fizzling on the floor and leaving marks. With a jolt, Natalia realized that the Houndoom's natural toxins were still inside it, and this spider... creature intended to use them to its advantage.

With a raw scream, the Riolu got back up and ran to the far corner of the room, the spider following closely. It ran lopsidedly, scurrying along and supporting the dead weight of Houndoom on top of it. Fangs, created from Houndoom's inner ribs, poked from the sides and dripped with venom.

Poison... poison! Natalia's eyes widened and she halted in place. Poison was useless against her! Steel typing—it could not be affected by any poison whatsoever! With a fierce grin, Natalia whipped around, ready to use the same trick on this monster that she'd used against Houndoom. She braced herself and allowed the 'fangs' to pierce her skin.

What she did not expect was to feel nothing.

There was only intense pressure and a feeling of her skin being filled with something. Confused, Natalia opened her eyes and looked at the ribs poking through her left shoulder and elbow crease. They were definitely pierced by the spider's fangs... but... why couldn't she feel it? Stunned, she realized a moment later that this beast's natural toxins were not of the Pokémon world. This was something created in this hell, and it most definitely affected Natalia despite her typing. The venom was a numbing agent—a disabler. The spider skree'd and backed off when Natalia landed a Force Palm to its 'face'.

Natalia tested her left arm, but it would not budge. Icy fear crept into her heart. Would this kill her? Was this venom to be her death?

But the spider hadn't had time to inject a lot of it—maybe Natalia's steel-typing would save her from this single bite. She felt somewhat nauseous and dizzy—the venom worked almost instantly on her body, but she hoped that she would not die or become crippled.

Looking up at the monster, she saw that she'd broken off the right fang with her Force Palm. But she was tiring... she had to kill this monster and be smart about it. She had to exploit a weakness. The spider-dog pounced, leaping forward to get in another bite. Natalia danced aside, narrowly missing the toxic bite. Its spine—there were cracks right where the left middle leg was, where it had twisted its body!

Natalia took a deep breath, concentrated, and summoned her courage.

Her paw straightened at a 90-degree angle to her arm. A faint red glow surrounded it. She struck—hard.

The spider-dog screeched. The backwards rib-legs folded under it and expanded outwards reflexively. It careened into walls drunkenly, a strange, wild and unnerving dance that ended when it landed on its own curled legs with a crunchy _thud_. The monster was finally dead.

Natalia collapsed onto her knees, shivering with the effects of the poison. Her arm was tingling back to life, but the toxins... they made her feel so _ill_. Before she could wonder at the long-lasting effects, a glowing light caught her eye and she looked up. The clear, smiling face of her old friend shone down at her.

"You did it, Natalia," he laughed. "You freed me from that monster's hold, and finally I can go _home!_" The boy's spirit touched her forehead, leaving traces of warmth. "Now, go find your trainer and show that valiance once more!"

Natalia looked into Justin's eyes and nodded tiredly.

_-Of course I will. I love you, Justin,-_ she whispered. He smiled joyfully and looked skywards before his ghost faded, leaving the Riolu alone. Tears tracked down her face again—but this time, they were born of happiness. Her eyes snapped open when she felt something nearby—her aura capabilities, stifled by this hellish Otherworld, had been unlocked, somehow! Justin's touch... she brushed her paw over the bridge of her muzzle. He had to have increased her abilities. They were so much more sensitive now—

And that was how she felt the pain and terror of her trainer, several floors down, directly below her paws.


	8. Forgiveness

A girl, very similar to Zor's appearance, stood solemnly in the mirror. She was surrounded by several people, all of whom Zor recognized. An overweight woman. A dark-haired man with greying temples. A balding old man with large-framed glasses. An older woman with a short brown haircut. They all had one thing in common, however—they were all looking right at Zor silently, and each of them had a look of contempt on their faces. The bloody tendrils were in the mirror again, this time caressing the faces of Zor's family. Zorayda tried struggling again, but she was unable to move at all. She gave up when she realized it was futile.

"Of course you would give up," a voice spat. Zor looked and saw her mother glaring at her—she'd been the one who had spoken. The large woman curled her lip. "You can't do anything right, can you?"

"Oh, don't be too hard on her," her grandmother piped up to the right. "It's not _her _fault that she's become such a failure... she just never had the talent or gumption to begin with."

Zorayda's heart sank. Why... how was her family in the mirror? And why were they saying such things...?

"You can't seriously think we would say anything else," said her grandfather—the old balding man. "It's your own damned fault, you know. You should feel bad for how little good we have to say about you. How could you make us so ashamed? How can you even stand to live with yourself?"

_'I... Grandpa, I thought...'_

"You thought Grandpa would try to help you out of this?" The voice Zor had dreaded hearing most spoke up. She had to force herself to look anywhere near her little sister's face. "None of us are going to help you, Zorayda. Not after what you did to us. After you abandoned me... to live with _her_." Her sister's eyes darted to look briefly at their mother, and Zor felt her heart stutter to a quiet stop.

_'I'm... I... I'm so sorry, Gracie... I couldn't stay there any longer...'_ Zorayda thought, knowing they'd be able to hear her. She was starting to feel desperate for air, fighting the instincts that demanded oxygen to her brain. Her panic was being impeded by the sorrow and guilt her family were forcing onto her, changing that energy into an internal hatred of herself.

"_You _couldn't?! How do you think I'M dealing with this?! I have to stay here, I have no choice! And you knew that! And you left me anyway!" The guilt struck Zorayda's psyche like a bus. She couldn't stand to be here, she couldn't look at anyone. She had long stopped trying to struggle against the monster's grip and hung limply in the air, like some kind of demented ragdoll. Oxygen, she needed _oxygen_... she almost couldn't think...

"What do _you _have to say about this?" Her mother's voice asked, this time directed at Zor's father. The dark-haired man raised an eyebrow.

"I don't give a shit. _You _deal with her. Or just let her suffocate on those things," he spat dismissively. Zor cringed. Her own father spoke as if she was some kind of pest or nuisance, a roach that he didn't even want to bother with crushing.

"I have a better idea," her sister spoke up quietly. "Let's let her deal with _herself_."

Zorayda wanted to gasp out a sob, but the monster's forced gag prevented her from making a sound. Gracie knew a secret none of the others did... and she was now taking advantage of Zor's ultimate vulnerability. Zorayda would have been weeping and begging her sister to take it back if she could, and yet, memories rushed back..

_She hadn't meant for it to get this far. The girl flung the knife as far away from herself as possible, the horrifying sound of the metal scraping against breastbone carved into her mind forever. She didn't know how awful the feeling of a knife would be, pushing as hard as she could until the point popped through the resilient skin, the relative ease it had navigating through the epidermal layer and fatty tissues of her body, right to the place where her sternum and rib bone met… She wasn't sure how close she'd gotten to her intended target—the heart—but she knew it had to have been damned close. She wondered if she'd nicked it anyways, though she couldn't go through and push the knife all the way in…_

_Zorayda panted like a crazed tigress as she held the dirty rag to her naked chest. Her skin had become so pale that it was a wonder that she was even a live person, walking around… but the panicked light in her eyes glinted dangerously behind the green. She didn't want to die… not_ really… _A sound up ahead in the hallway made Zor snap her head towards it._

"Zorry? Where are you?" 

'No, no no… I can't let Gracie see me like this,' _Zorayda thought manically._ 'I have to hide, but there's nowhere—! What do I do?!' _At the last possible second, Zorayda's lips pulled back and bared her teeth, like a cornered animal._

_"__Go AWAY! I don't want you in here!" Zor screamed. She heard Gracie falter._

"Wh-what? Zor, what's wr—"

"I said GET OUT!"

_Zor didn't even have time to feel guilt over the gasp, followed by a sob and the patter of feet as they dashed back down the hallway. Zorayda dashed into her bedroom and slammed the door shut, locking it quickly. She pulled the rag away from the spot between her breasts and bit back a warbling cry. The wound was a perfectly neat puncture, approximately two inches wide in a straight line—an exact match to the tool she'd used on herself to inflict such an injury… and even as she watched, fresh blood oozed out, a shocking bright red as opposed to what she normally thought blood's color was supposed to look like. She felt faint… she could feel how woozy she was becoming, and realized that she needed help right that second._

_In the end, she'd ended up having to have so many stitches at the hospital. They told her that if she'd pressed in only a half millimeter more, she would have punctured the aorta and bled out in seconds. It wasn't until many, many years later that Zorayda revealed to her little sister that it was no accident, and that she hadn't stumbled and fallen into her father's Exacto knives from his hobby kit in the garage—the story she ended up telling everyone else._

"That's right," Gracie murmured. "C'mon, Zor. Finish it. Don't be a coward like you always were."

_'But... Gracie...'_

"Don't you want to do just one thing I ask of you? Come on, Zorayda. Do this one thing for me." Gracie's voice was pleading and soft. She sounded so broken, so sad… "Do it and I'll forgive you—for everything." Zorayda felt like she wanted to tremble, but again, was prevented from doing so.

_'Gracie...'_

"Will you do it? For me? Sacrifice it all, Zor. I want to know that you really love me as much as you said you did, back then."

_'I...' _Zor closed her eyes. Silence ticked by for several seconds...

_'Y-yes, Gracie, I'll do it.' _

Zor felt her lungs tremble inside her chest, though her body wouldn't move. Her sister's smile was obscene above her.

"I knew you would come through for me. Now..." The grip of the monster's sanguine tendrils suddenly relented, and Zorayda collapsed onto the floor, gasping. "I want you to grab that long shard of glass on the floor..."

_

Natalia raced as quickly as her trembling legs would carry her down endless flights of stairs. Three times she nearly stumbled and fell down them, but the danger of the situation did not register. Zorayda's essense was fluctuating dangerously between raw fear and despair, and a sense of defeat. There was also the feeling that she was _fading _in and out, like her aura had become a bad radio signal.

This heightened Natalia's sense of urgency and she only scrambled faster, leaping in bounds down steps and skipping four or five at a time to get to her trainer. Fading auras meant only one thing—that the aura's owner was near death. Zorayda was slipping back and forth—slowly at first, but with every precious second it was quickening.

Her trainer was dying.

_-Zor, no! No, you can't die, not when I fought so hard to find you...!-_ Natalia's frantic thoughts urged her on even _faster_, moving her body harder than she could have in any other state of mind. _-Zorayda, stay with me!-_

The trainer picked up the jagged edge of mirror as the other-Gracie had asked, struggling to get a grip on it from the floor. Tiny fragments burrowed their way under her fingernails as she fumbled to grab it.

"Good girl," Gracie cooed. "Come on, then. Pick a spot, any spot. Let me suggest your carotid, hmm?"

Tears dripped freely onto the floor, blurring Zor's vision as she gripped the glass shard and came to a sitting position. She leaned back, broken, against the filthy bathroom wall. Her head tilted back and she felt the crown of her head touch cool tiles.

"Lift it up, now."

Sobbing silently, Zorayda did as she was asked. She pressed the edge of glass against the side of her throat and closed her eyes, taking slow, shuddering breaths.

"Don't back out. Do it. _Do it_," the voice hissed, though Zorayda didn't notice that the dulcet tones of her sister's voice were fading into something reptilian—alien, almost...


	9. Hopelessness

Natalia felt nothing but sadness and defeat from Zorayda now. Panicked, the Riolu finally leapt seven steps down to the bottom of the staircase, twisting her ankle though she did not feel it. The venom from before had pumped through her system far faster than normal, and the surge of energy from the poison running its course gave her the strength she needed to hone in on the bathroom doorway and rush straight at it.

The Riolu entered, spotting nothing inside but her trainer. Zorayda was backed against a wall, crying, a makeshift knife held to her own neck. With lightning speed, Natalia rushed at her trainer, grabbing the glass and yanking it from Zor's hands. The gashes in her paw and across Zorayda's palm were nothing, nothing at all, compared to the relief at seeing that Zorayda had not succeeded in her attempt at suicide.

_-What the EVER LIVING HELL were you_ thinking?!- The Riolu roared through her link. Zorayda only sat and looked at the Pokémon with confused eyes, as if she'd been in a catatonic state. Natalia, teeth bared, did something that no Pokémon ever dared do to their trainers. Eyes wild, the Riolu reared back, poised.

Zorayda's head snapped to the side as Natalia's paw slapped her, hard, right across the cheekbone. Stunned, Zorayda could only blink stupidly as her Pokémon then leapt on her, hugging her neck. Relieved sobs shook the tiny Pokémon's form, and finally the trainer came to.

"N-Natalia..." Zor's arms wrapped around her beloved partner—but they only embraced for a few seconds before the woman stiffened. "Th-they're... it's coming! Natalia we have to leave, _NOW!_"

Natalia pushed back and looked at Zor's face. Her trainer's lips were pulled back in a grimace, her eyes wild with fear.

Something behind them shifted.

Natalia didn't even have time to turn and look at what it was before something smashed into them, heavy and filthy. The Riolu's nose filled with the scent of human filth and sweat, and a greasy, rubbery _thing_rubbed against her fur. There was a deafening crash, a lurch, and the floor actually _gave out_ below them—the hole that had been there before cracked and broke apart, the whole room collapsing—

They fell, the unidentified source of Zorayda's fear falling behind them, huffing and panting—

Natalia lost her grip on Zorayda and she flew apart from the girl, crying out as she struck something metal and bounced onto a metal grate. Zorayda continued to fall, her scream whooshing past with the beast following just behind—a ball of pink flesh.

Natalia could do nothing but watch as she lost her partner again in the darkness.

_

Fear. Panic. Relief, joy. Fear. _Terror_.

These were the things Brigael felt from his trainer and the Pokémon he'd been partnered with. Natalia's emotions were utterly confusing, and changed so fast... First there was guilt, doubt. Then, fury—followed up by happiness, which then turned to unadulterated panic and alarm. Then relief and happiness once more... and now, she was afraid _again!_

As for Zorayda, her feelings of guilt and helplessness, paired with a lack of will... these almost sent the little Ralts into a frenzy that would never have been forgiven by the humans surrounding him.

One question, the same as the one before, still screamed out in his mind: where _were _they, and why was he feeling all of their emotions?!

It was _coming_. Zorayda's fingernails tore at the wall in a futile attempt to escape from the footsteps that quickened behind her.

_'It's going to kill me, Natalia left me, it's going to kill me, it's going to kill me!'_ The thoughts chased each other frantically in her head in a lightning-fast mantra that never ended, pushing her further and further into a frenzy of fear. But—there! There, a door! Quickly, she had to get through—but the lock was firmly shut.

"Aaaaaugh!" She screamed in desperate frustration. The shuffling footsteps were nearing. The monster was getting closer... she could hear its wet, shallow breathing, like a mix between a panting tiger and the wheezes of a morbidly obese person walking up a set of stairs. The way its eyes had looked... it was like two entities were carried inside, one despairing over its state as the creature it was, tormented by the fleshy encasing that surrounded it, and the other was a predatory, evil monster, a thing that knew nothing but destruction.

The thing finally turned the corner. The view of it so close... it was repulsive. It was a fat, fleshy sac of pus and death, with blackened skin and haunted eyes. The light of recognition reached the eyes and it roared again, a tortured screaming that simultaneously made Zorayda aware of her own mortality and its hunger. She backed up against the locked door, spine pressing hard against the metal. This was it. She was going to die. The monster's whirring machines that kept it alive beeped like the ones at the hospital—for a flash of a moment, Zorayda remembered that this was much like the sounds before her grandmother died.

A brief stab of guilt reached her and stole the air from her lungs—maybe this was this world's way of punishing her for abandoning her family. Perhaps she should just accept this death, as horribly violent and painful it may be... maybe this was her personal Hell, where she was forced to face the entity of the ones she'd left behind...

She lurched suddenly backwards and on instinct her arms windmilled outwards, hitting the doorframe—the _doorframe!_ Without a second thought, Zor slammed the door as hard as her hammering heart. The wheezing monster screamed again and slammed its fleshy body against the metal door, locked once more. The darkness in here took a moment to get used to, but Zor's eyes made out a tiny figure nearby.

"Natalia!" She exclaimed, the sound thick with relief, joy, and fright. "You... you didn't leave me?" The Pokémon jumped forward and grabbed Zor's leg fiercely. The trainer could see tears caking the sides of her face.

_-Of course not. We just got separated, but I was looking for you... I found this door, and I don't know why but I just knew I needed to open it, even if I could hear that—thing—coming for us.-_ Natalia's smile was watery and just a little proud. _–__I found you, mistress.-_

"I'm so glad," Zorayda gasped, her smile trembling. The trainer scooped her Pokémon up into her arms and hugged the little fighting-type fiercely. "Let's stick together in here! Being alone—it's just the worst. Especially in this place," Zorayda muttered darkly. She felt Natalia nod against her shoulder and they let go. Zor took a look around the room that Natalia had let her into. "Where is this?" She asked. Natalia looked over and shrugged.

_-I dunno, it was just somewhere to escape to so that monster couldn't get to us,-_ the Pokémon answered. Her ears jutted forward when the monster's screaming was heard again, frustrated at losing its quarry._-We have to get out of here!-_

"But... where?" Zorayda asked, realizing as she looked around that there didn't seem to be an exit. Natalia gave her a bewildered look.

_-What do you mean, 'where'? Just over here is where I came through—wait...-_ The Riolu pointed in the opposite direction of the door, but there was nothing there. Zor wondered just what was wrong with her Pokémon, but then she remembered where they were.

"What... what if this place can change rooms and doors?" Zorayda squeaked. Natalia didn't say a word, but turned to give Zorayda the most horrified look she'd ever seen. "We're trapped in here with that thing trying to get in. Oh God," Zorayda sank to the ground, fingers gripping her hair at the roots. "Natalia, we can't die here, there has to be a way out! Help me!"

The two of them scampered quickly to the walls, checking to see if there was a trick to the stone walls—but it was in vain. Nothing revealed itself, and they were both trapped, bricked in by the walls, lacking even a window or a hole in the floor. The monster screeched in agonized rage, and a quiet moment passed.

_-Maybe it gave up,-_ Natalia sent desperately. But not a second later, a deafening _boom _sounded, and a dent appeared in the heavy metal door. _-Zor...-_ Natalia reached her paws up to Zorayda, who scooped the Pokémon up and squeezed her tightly to her bosom. The two could only watch helplessly as the creature thudded into the door over and over, bending and breaking the metal, until finally the door was down.

The beast growled in satisfaction, a sound that was more like a human trying to be funny and mimic a Luxray—except this was no laughing matter. The trainer and her partner Pokémon were probably going to meet their end, thanks to this humanoid abomination. Zor felt Natalia's paw touch her cheek. They needed this comfort from each other, the support and love to carry each other on even in when facing death. But a second later, the Riolu tensed up as the thing entered the room, sniffing the air with obscene pleasure. Zorayda's blood froze at the smile it wore, unaware that it was able to make such an expression or feel any emotion matching it.

There was no hesitation. It got on all fours like an animal and charged right for the pair of them, spittle and filth flying behind its body. Zorayda whimpered but stayed still, bracing herself for the pain she was surely about to feel. She glanced down at the Riolu's huddled form, her large, scarlet eyes carrying the shine of innocence. Zorayda had one last thought before she made a last-ditch attempt to keep Natalia from the monster.

_'Gracie... I love you.'_

She grabbed the tiny Pokémon with both hands and threw her as hard as she could, Natalia barking and wailing as she flew away from her trainer.

There was an awful _crunch_—Zor could feel the weight and force behind the impact, almost like an aftershock of an earthquake. But... she was still standing. Utterly baffled, she opened her scrunched eyelids and blinked at the view before her. Her Pokémon had caught herself using her natural fighting-type reflexes, against the comparably weak throw of her human trainer.

"Na-Natalia!?"

The trainer's jaw dropped, eyes wide with wonder and awe. Her precious partner, so tiny and timid, was standing in front of Zorayda with her arms open wide, ears and black locks touseled by the force of an energy only the Pokémon would have been able to produce. Except—the Pokémon that stood there was not a Riolu. Natalia was taller, her markings slightly changed, her muzzle longer, the metal spikes at her paws more developed. Her hind claws dug deep gouges in the tiled floor as she pushed back protectively against the monster that had dared charge her trainer. There was a fire and a glow that was partially due to Natalia's aura and partially due to the courageous spirit she'd had deep within all along. Zor's amazing, mysterious, wonderful Pokémon partner had evolved to protect her.

_-NO!-_ came the powerful message, far more forceful than Zor had ever felt from Natalia. _-YOU WILL NOT HARM MY HUMAN. I WILL NOT ALLOW IT!-_ Her white fangs were bared in a fearsome snarl, claws all extended, her aura capabilities forcing the monster back. The beast screamed again, backing away from the sudden danger. It did not comprehend—its prey was fighting back instead of running. Zor could see the confusion and anger written all over its features, more animal than anything else.

Natalia didn't allow it a moment to breathe. She lunged forward, barking and snarling. The Lucario held her front paws close together and behind her waist for a brief moment, a bright, reddish light forming between them. The beast roared again, louder—Zorayda had to cover her ears as the awful sound left a ringing in her ears. Natalia released the ball of light and it zoomed right at the monster, cutting off its roar abruptly and sending it sprawling across the room. The trainer recognized the attack—it was an advanced move called Aura Sphere, something that Lucario and Riolu learned at a higher level.

It seemed the dire situation they were in, mixed with her Pokémon's latent potential, had forced Natalia to act upon that instinct. But, looking at the newly evolved Lucario, Zor could see her ribcage heaving. That attack had taken a lot of out Natalia, already... with a shock, Zor also realized that Natalia's paw was holding onto her abdomen, where what looked like a recent scar had split and begun to bleed.

"Natalia! You can't keep fighting, we have to get out!" Zorayda called to her Pokémon. The Lucario glared at her trainer sideways. Zor blinked. She'd never seen this expression on Natalia's face before... it was a look of flat-out refusal, something she recognized a lot more from Brigael than her obedient Riolu.

_-I will not back out this time. Justin deserved better, and I failed him...-_ Natalia retaliated. _-I will not do the same for you!-_

"...Justin?" Zor stammered. Who was Justin? And what did Natalia mean about failing him? The Lucario refused to meet Zorayda's gaze after this, though, and instead rushed back at the monster with blazing speed. Extremespeed—another advanced move. How did Natalia even know how to _use _these attacks?! Then again, Zorayda had never seen them done in person, so she had no idea how Natalia's technique was...

A sharp _ki-yi_ took Zor's attention. The trainer gasped, raising her hands to her mouth. The monster had expected Natalia to rush in... and had taken advantage of the movement. Its hands, all claws made from long, sadistic-looking needles, were pierced into Natalia's abdomen all the way across her ribs and up to her left shoulder, holding her up there. The monster leered up at the fearful Lucario before slamming her down on the floor and digging the points further into the Pokémon's body.

"NOOO!" Zorayda shrieked. Everything seemed to slow as the monster towered over the prone Pokémon, whose eyes glowed once more.

_-D-Die!-_

The Lucario raised a paw, wobbly with pain, but containing a fully charged ball of energy. Zorayda didn't recognize what it was at first, but the shot connected—right between the awful monster's piggy eyes. It reared back, claws lifting Natalia off the ground briefly before the needles slid out of the Lucario's body. Its awful screeches were pained rather than enraged—the charged shot Natalia had placed there was literally burrowing into the monster's skull. Chunks of its filthy flesh sprayed out in a circle, like the ball was spinning and scraping it all away; then a terrible grinding sound, mixed with the smell of burnt flesh, and the monster's cries became weaker and weaker.

Its thrashing was erratic, and at one point it resorted to bashing its head against the stone wall until Natalia's energy ball burrowed into its brain. Blood and matter splattered against the stone in a perfect arc, and finally the beast went silent. The pile of flesh fell to the ground with a squashed _thud_—dead.

Zorayda let out a strangled cry and ran to her fallen partner.

"Oh... oh God, _no_, Natalia!" Zorayda screamed, rushing to her Pokémon 's side. The Lucario tried to get to her knees, but she collapsed like a sack of potatoes with a quiet _splut_ right in the monster's diseased blood. It wasn't like those romantic novels or movies, where the dying hero fell to their knees first and was caught in the arms of their beloved. Natalia didn't cry out or look tragically beautiful. Instead, Zorayda had barely enough time skidding on her knees to scoop up the Pokémon before Natalia's eyes rolled back in her head. Her mouth foamed, nostrils flared. The Lucario's body twitched violently, and though her arm moved a bit, Natalia's shaking paw just couldn't seem to make it to Zorayda's face as she'd intended.

_-Z-Zor...- _Natalia tried to form a coherent thought but Zor shushed her and caressed the dog's masked face. Her fur was caked in grime and gore, and when Natalia finally stopped twitching, her eyes were darkening at the corners. It was like seeing someone with bloodshot eyes, only the blood was black and smoky, and was traveling at much too fast a rate to be real. Zorayda nearly crushed Natalia to her body, panicking. Her beloved Pokémon couldn't die. Not here. No, no no no _no no no_—

_-I p-protected you...- _Natalia stammered out, and the smoky blood was closing in now from her skin. It was like those mirrors Zorayda had seen before, except this was real, and it was happening to her beloved partner. Zor felt something wet dribble down her chin and drop off, wetting Natalia's neck fur in spots. It took Zor a few seconds to realize that tears were coming from her own eyes.

Natalia blinked slowly, eyes now totally darkened to black. Her mouth curved up into a very small smile before her body shuddered weakly once more. Natalia's jaw parted slightly—Zor could see a blackened tongue for a moment before Natalia's body twitched, then relaxed completely.

"Oh my God... Oh Arceus, no, no, Natalia, _please_," Zorayda pleaded. Her voice wobbled as she repeated "No, no, no, no", the words rising in volume and speed until it became an incoherent wail rising into the hellish night. The blood on the floor began quietly receding. Zorayda saw the monster's body turn to ash out of the corner of her eye, and the roof of the bricked-in room started to peel away above her. The fog from before was back. Wind picked up the dead ashes of the defeated monster and they flurried around her like demented snow.

Melancholy wind and soft sobs were the only thing heard in the entire city as Zorayda held her dead companion. Natalia was dead. There would be no one here to protect her anymore, no warmth of another... She felt the cold freeze of despair and grief grip her heart when she truly realized... She looked up, her lips forming an 'o'. She was alone.

The ashes continued to fall.


	10. Epilogue

Brigael stopped his frantic search completely when he felt two extremely strong presences together—Natalia's and Zorayda's. They were _right here_, right in front of him! If he reached out—no, he couldn't feel anything. His horn flared like some kind of crazed police light.

He gasped and grabbed his chest. There was so much fear... the emotions faded into grim acceptance, then there was a spike of—courage? From Natalia? This was unexpected... she was not a brave Pokémon, and yet, her aura was pulsing and glowing with her courage and determination, and she was so strong now. Had she... was she fighting some enemy? She felt different somehow, like a fuller, more complete being. Evolved, perhaps?

It was so difficult to tell when he was feeling Zorayda's worry and terror simultaneously along with Natalia's battle emotions. He froze when he felt something... _off_. Natalia was... fading.

This only meant one thing—she was dying. Zorayda had to have been with her, because he felt her disbelief at the exact same moment that Natalia's essence fluctuated—she seemed strangely accepting... Only a few moments later, Natalia disappeared entirely, fading with grace.

Understandably, Zorayda's grief was almost tangible after this. Brigael felt her become bereft, grief-stricken... and afraid. The Ralts knelt down on the ground, touching the grass and wishing dearly he could reach his trainer.

His stomach went cold when he felt her essence disappear along with Natalia a few seconds later. The horrifying thing was, there was no acceptance or grace at all in it—only darkness.


End file.
